Karalora

The new Christmas tree set this year uses red Technic balls as ornaments. It might actually be a little too tall for all but the grandest public displays if we're talking minifig scale though. It can be hard to determine where the line is between religious and "merely" cultural. Ironically, the fact that devils are considered evil might make it easier for them to make the jump from one side to the other, since adherents of a religion are unlikely to insist that devils are emblematic of their faith. The Cute Little Devil is very obviously a child in a Halloween costume, which adds another layer of separation, whereas when people dress up as angels, it's usually for a church function, bringing it right back to religion. On the whole, I agree that stereotypical angels in the sense of "pretty people with robes and halos and feathered wings" have evolved to be a pop-culture archetype as much as or more than a religious one, but I can see why TLG might be hesitant to cross that line even though they've nudged right up to it more than once.

I think I'm actually gonna spring for a Main Street set. The shallow depth of the buildings might actually be a feature rather than a bug for me since my display space is limited.

Have you ever tried using Technic ball joints as ornaments? They're a little big for a living room scale tree, but they could work on a big one in a village square, and they come in a decent variety of colors, including metallic silver (not gold, though, which would be preferred). Totally agree about the star, though. I've seen tree builds that use a magic wand, or a yellow snowflake, or a star/lollipop combo, but we're really hurting for a simple star that sits upright with either an anti-stud or a bar on the bottom. TLG still seems too wary of religion to produce an angel tree topper, but the Leia hologram piece might be a nice compromise if they made it in pearl gold or white. Get on that, LEGO.

I love this so much!

Yeah, that sweater is the real prize here. I think I can make that Mrs. Claus with parts I already have. She looks more like a woman cosplaying a feminine Santa than the traditional image of Mrs. Claus.

Very nice! I like the "floating" bone effect.

Agreed. I need a properly designed one with a sweet old-fashioned granny face with half-moon spectacles, a mob cap, and a torso that actually matches the apron print on the skirt. Maybe instead do legs with candy cane striped stockings and buckled shoes and a cloth skirt accessory with the apron print. Mrs. Claus instead exactly a floor-length dress kind of gal.

I am aware of both, but I'm talking about the general connotations of colors in the mainstream. You never hear about the Lavender Menace anymore (at least I don't). And wasn't the Tinky Winky thing more about the triangle than the purple?

Sounds like it's too hot for a sweater then. j/k More power to you, my guy. The only way we change arbitrary BS like that is to defy it.

Up until say 10 years ago, any shade of purple was second only to pink in terms of being considered too “girly” for boys to have anything to do with it, but I think for dark “royal” purple at least, that reputation has faded and it is more associated with a gender-neutral expression of power, opulence, and showiness. Lilac and other pale shades are still considered very feminine, as are most pastels.

I can't believe I almost overlooked this... Fantastic work as always, @Robert8! Given TLG's love of the Bat, it's a little surprising that they've never dipped into the BTAS designs. What an iconic series! Certainly it was what introduced me to the bulk of the Batman mythos, as well as being a far more nuanced portrayal of superhero-type action than anything else I had ever seen. It really struck me as a teen, how many of Batman's enemies were portrayed as victims, of their own mental illness and/or society. (Actually, reflecting on it...how many BTAS villains were driven to extremes because they were unfairly judged for their appearance? Mary Dahl, Matt Hagen, Paige Monroe...and that's just off the top of my head! Clearly it was on the minds of the show writers a lot.) Anyway, this is absolutely fantastic and the unique baseplates are an especially clever touch! Thank you for continuing your great work in this theme!

I think there was a blond version of the Spooky Girl wig in there for a while, but all the ones I saw looked very grungy because dirt clings to the rubber.

There were definitely new parts in 2021, they just don't seem to have officialized the list on BL.

A knock-off Mickey Mouse? My dude, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit came before Mickey. If anything, Mickey is a knock-off Oswald. (More accurately, of course, cartoon characters in the 1920s just Looked Like That--see also Felix the Cat, Bosco, etc.). Walt Disney created Oswald under contract with Universal Pictures in 1927, only to discover that he didn't own the rights to his own creation. So he ended the relationship with Universal, struck out on his own, and created Mickey, and the rest is entertainment history. Mickey succeeded and Oswald fell into obscurity until the Walt Disney Company bought back the rights to the character in the 2000s and did some promotions, including using him in the video game Epic Mickey.

For whatever it's worth, wolves don't have bazooms. Therefore, the transformation to a half-wolf form might render a lady werewolf physically indistinguishable from a dude werewolf, at least as long as the pants hold out. Meaning that the existing werewolf minifigs could be AFAP (Assigned Female At Playtime) while we wait for an official one.

Didn't we have a whole thread about skin tone diversity in LEGO a while back? (Spoiler: Yes we did.) @living_off_lego isn't talking about yellow minifigs, so bringing them up is a distraction from the main issue, which is that characters of color are underrepresented in the source material for licensed sets, and hence in the sets themselves. That's not entirely on LEGO; that's on the whole entertainment industry. What is on LEGO is which price points/set sizes they choose to assign which scenes in the source material, and how they choose to package and sell flesh-toned minifigs apart from that. There's nothing stopping them from either replicating a less setpiece-intensive scene that also features a character of color as a $20-30 set, or outright selling fleshie minifig packs with a variety of skin tones.

Public domain in this case only means that copyright has been lifted, not trademark. There's a lot of confusion over the difference between copyright and trademark. Here are some of the salient points as I understand them. Copyright applies to a specific created work--a film, book, graphic design, song, etc. It means what it says: the right to copy, to make more instances of the work, usually to distribute and sell. A character cannot be copyrighted. A created work featuring a character--a picture of them, story about them, etc.--can be. Trademark applies to a distinctive visual design or recognizable idea that is generally considered a symbol of, or otherwise inseparable from, the entity that owns the trademark. Company logos are trademarks. And fictional characters can be trademarks--Mickey Mouse is a trademark of Disney, so even when Steamboat Willie, the 1928 cartoon, enters the public domain, Disney will still have sole rights to create new cartoons and other art using Mickey. Likewise, the character of Tarzan--the fictional jungle wildman by that name--is a trademark of the Edgar Rice Burroughs Estate. Some individual Tarzan stories are in the public domain, meaning anyone can reprint them verbatim, but the ERB Estate holds the sole rights to create--or alternately grant license to create--new works featuring Tarzan, including adaptations of the existing public domain stories. This is the situation as I understand it. I am not a lawyer of any sort, so take my explanation with a grain of salt. Anyone who knows better, feel free to correct me.

With all the fantastic spooky minifigs TLG has given us over the years, there are still a few key players we're missing. I've got a long wishlist, but my top picks in this category would be: Monster Bride (of Frankenstein) Grim Reaper--easy to kitbash with existing parts, but I would like a unique version also. Ghost Bride Monstrous Vampire (think Count Orlok) Lady Vampire--the one in Monster Fighters is okay, but the glow-in-the-dark face is so gimmicky. The Spider Lady is too specific a concept; I want something more like Lily Munster--the look, not necessarily the personality. Let vampires be evil! Evil Scarecrow Good Witch I'd like to see some more color variations on both the standard pumpkin and the jack-o-lantern head cover, to reflect the natural variety in real pumpkins. And while we're at it, how about a friendlier face on the jack-o-lantern? Not all pumpkin-headed Halloween mascots are sinister! For that matter, more unique faces on the jack-o-lantern minifig heads would always be welcome.

I'm still holding out hope for an actual folkloric anthropomorphic bunny rabbit as the Easter Bunny, instead of people wearing hoods with ears. They could reuse the VIDIYO mold for the head.

I like the antlers are a separate part. You could use them with a hairpiece that has a pinhole to have a minifig wearing one of those dorky antler headbands!

It's a slightly complicated situation. The character of Tarzan is trademarked by the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate. Disney licensed the character in order to make the 1999 movie, associated merchandise, the first Kingdom Hearts game, and assorted other things. (If you watch the opening screens of KH, you'll see the Tarzan license listed individually.) But Tarzan wasn't a big seller all on his own, so they let the license lapse. They still hold the copyright on their own movie and anything else they made while the license is active, but trying to produce new items could open a legal can of worms that I'm sure Disney doesn't want to get into for the sake of a C-tier IP.

In any case, I would much rather have new characters than retreads of older ones, even if they are "more accurate." (Sorcerer Mickey counts as a new character for these purposes, and has to be my top pick.)

That's odd, it shows up for me just fine. But for some reason I'm not able to upload images directly. In any case, if you do a Google Image search for "Peter Pan & Captain Hook," you should get plenty of examples of them on-screen together so you can make the comparison.

He's really not (compare them in this image), but Peter is so gangly and agile that he would look very strange with the medium legs. Not to mention, the minifig kind of needs the length so there's room for the extension of his tunic print. Hook's hat helps him to look much taller; I think the two are okay as they are.