Karalora

There are so many cute winter holiday-themed possibilities for disability rep! A skier with prosthetics hooked right into their skis. Mobility aids decorated with wreaths and bows. Little people owning it by dressing up as elves. Et cetera.

That's how I roll, baby.

Pretty pleased--I grabbed eight from the Westfield Topanga LEGO Store and only got one duplicate.

Mary Poppins is one of those characters who is live-action but could be considered an honorary animated character, simply because her film is so iconic within the Disney library alongside animated ones.

People wondered why characters were given uninspiring accessories instead of their small animal sidekicks. I proposed a reason. Did I overthink it? Maybe. But so what? Speculating is fun.

I...mentioned Camilla. Did you miss the part where I mentioned Camilla?

There's also an existing Pascal the chameleon, from the Friends-styled Disney Princess line, if that's what you really want. Back when the first wave of these had just come out and we were speculating about any future waves, a lot of people suggested packaging characters with their animal sidekicks. I said then, and I still mostly think now, that this is unlikely. I suspect that the licensing contract with Disney addresses a particular number of characters in a given wave, and that trying to include sidekick characters as accessories would be in violation. But I could be wrong, and in any case they packaged Gonzo with Camilla, so even if it was true then, it mightn't be anymore.

I hope we don't get any more Pixar characters in the Disney waves. It has always bothered me that Disney itself tends to mash its own animation studio and Pixar together as if there were no distinction between them. The two studios have notably different storytelling styles and ways of setting up character dynamics (although naturally there is some cross-pollination).

It's from a Star Wars Advent Calendar. You can find it on Bricklink for a reasonable enough price. EDIT: Ninja'd by Robert8

I didn't even consider the possibility of theme park original characters! I would DIE for a Figment minifig! A miniFigment, if you will...

A hundred bucks? Dang. No, you know what my biggest WV wish is? That they'd go back to modest $40-60 sets. Last year we got Santa's Sleigh for a very affordable price, but it was like the add-on to the Santa's Visit house. I haven't kept up with collecting these in part because the size and price have blown up.

If you still want a snowman face, you could substitute this head instead:

This is a great idea and a great list! My only suggested change would be Roger Rabbit in the 1980s slot, as Princesses in general and Ariel in particular are overrepresented in Disney merch. I'd also love to see a minifig of Mary Poppins (and like her better than Mowgli as a character), but for the Disney rounds, they seem pretty committed to animated characters only.

That thought occurred to me, but the Hocus Pocus house is going to be a large, expensive set. I was envisioning something closer to the $50-60 range. I like your ideas in themselves, but they don't quite seem to be part of the same concept as mine. You've got eerie scenarios where the mundane and the supernatural cross paths (potentially to the detriment of the former). I'm just kind of positing the existence of a suburban monster neighborhood--maybe it's a mysterious part of town where no one goes, maybe it's part of a larger monster city in a monster world, maybe it's not even real but a trick-or-treat event with people in costumes--but in any case it's just a setup with no specific implied story. It's an answer to the question, what kind of houses would Halloween monsters live in? Well, witches would live in a storybook cottage, vampires would live in a fancy mansion, and a werewolf would live in a broken-down trailer house.

Yeah, fair. In the States, at least in my corner, the main association between firefighters and Christmas is if someone's tree or turkey dinner caught fire and it spread to the rest of the house. I've seen some people suggest a Town Hall, and that works if you assume that it fronts onto a village commons where people gather for festivities. But in general, the more "degrees of separation" there are, the more you have to add to the building to make it a Christmas scene, the less natural it feels to me. Some of the other suggestions I like: Department store--gift shopping, as well as a place for kids to sit on Santa's lap Hotel/Inn--fits in with holiday traveling, and an inn especially can have a gathering room with a big fireplace and people drinking hot apple cider Candy/sweet shop--self-explanatory Hardware store--another place people like to shop for gifts, and most of them sell decorations for your house and yard

My feeling is that sets like the Fire Station or a hypothetical Police Station or Library don't really fit the Winter Village vibe, no matter how thick their snowy roofs are. To me, those might say "village in the winter," but not Winter Village, you know? The main structure of a Winter Village set should be something whose purpose ties into Christmas/holiday traditions and activities.

I came up with this one a couple years ago, and as we're gradually crawling toward fall I've been thinking a lot about it again: A Spooky Neighborhood for Halloween (to go with the Winter Village for Christmas). Each set would be a different dwelling or other feature of the neighborhood where the Halloween monsters live. You could take it at face value, as a fantasy thing, or frame it as a haunted attraction and say that those are just people in costumes. Some set concepts: Witches' Cottage--a smallish cottage inhabited by three witches (a pretty one, a matronly one, and a scary old one), with a cluttered herb garden. Pumpkin House--a family dwelling shaped like a pumpkin, residence of the Pumpkinhead family (mother, father, and two kids) who all have jack-o-lanterns for heads. They also have a greenhouse with a carnivorous plant living in it, and a large pumpkin patch where close examination reveals that they are growing some new family members! (Some of the pumpkins have "sleeping" jack-o-lantern face prints.) Vampire Manor--the fanciest house in the neighborhood, a Gothic Victorian mansion with a backyard crypt. Home to Baron von Vampire and his wife, Uncle Orlok (a monstrous vampire with pointed ears), Cousin Batsy (a man-bat), and the family's brainwashed manservant (an expy of Renfield from Dracula). In some ways a callback to the Haunted House set from Monster Fighters, but this would be elegant rather than ramshackle. Would introduce the goblet piece in trans-red. Honeymoon Pyramid--a charming little pyramid getaway for two, also including a pyramid-shaped doghouse and an obelisk birdhouse. Minifigs are two mummies, male and female. The interior features a double-sized sarcophagus-bed and lots of gold knickknacks. Also comes with a black dog wearing a gold Egyptian collar and a pair of vultures. Werewolf's Camper--the smallest set I've come up with so far, just a rusted-out two-wheeled camp trailer parked under a twisted tree. The minifig is a Larry Talbot-style Wolfman, and the set also includes an ambiguous wolf/dog. It's up to you whether it lives with him...or is him! Graveyard Jamboree--another large set, a parklike space full of headstones, statues, and small crypts, as well as trees in glorious fall foliage, one of which is suspiciously large and has a spooky face! Minifigs are a male and a female zombie, two shrouded ghosts, and three skeletons, the latter of whom are implicitly a band--their bony musical instruments are included. There's also a skeletal dog and an owl to perch in the big tree. Another feature of this model is that it is slightly modular--the individual grave and tree builds can be arranged within the space to your taste. The Grim Coach--an old-fashioned horse-drawn hearse with seating inside and on the roof. The "public transportation" for the Spooky Neighborhood. Comes with a Grim Reaper minifig (the driver) and a skeletal horse. You can very easily imagine a scenario where the coach goes around the neighborhood picking up the residents (might take two or three trips) and drops them off at the graveyard for a musical block party. In any case, the idea throughout is to be spooky, but not horrific. There are no victims here (except maybe the Renfield expy, but he's too comical to trigger that oof reaction).

Considering we're just 10 days away from the official release, I think I can hold out until then.

Man, I would be ecstatic if they did Sleeping Beauty Castle. I wouldn't expect another castle, but I guess it's been long enough since the first one that it's not out of the realm of possibility. I would just hope it wouldn't be the same exact concept (miniature scenes referencing different fairy tale movies) in a different shell, as it were. The interior of the Anaheim castle is a series of dioramas telling the story of Sleeping Beauty, and it would be interesting to see them attempt that instead.

I can easily believe the Disney Train didn't sell as well as the Castle. It's nowhere near as iconic a structure. Everyone with access to media knows what "the Disney Castle" looks like, but the only way you're acquainted with the train station is if you've been to one of the parks or otherwise take a specific interest. Of course, this raises the question of what the third most recognizable Disney theme park building would be, to maintain the pattern. My sister thinks it's the Mark Twain/Liberty Belle (a paddlewheel steamship found in Frontierland). It's not a bad guess, but considering they already did the Steamboat Willie set, I would hope for something more unique. Space Mountain is pretty distinctive, but it would be fiendishly difficult to design in LEGO format and it's not easy to imagine characters to include with it. Now that we have a micro-version of Anaheim's Haunted Mansion, it's hard to imagine TLG springing for a full-sized one. Orlando's Haunted Mansion seems like a possibility though.

They don't appear to have been assigned to a particular minifig and were just part of the mix starting in 2019.

Could be because the seagull's wings are angled instead of straight. In a large pile of parts, the owl's wings will simply slide out from between whatever they're piled with, but the seagull's might get hooked around other items and the additional stress could increase the risk of breaking with hard plastic.

It's almost like they're...perfectly interchangeable bricks... Actually, you're kinda right? I don't know if it would be feasible, much less desirable, to have uniquely styled fixtures and lighting in every store, but the area a store is located in should be reflected in e.g. the Pick-a-Brick wall, unique builds on display, etc.

The head is definitely new. That print looks a lot rougher than either the CMF Scarecrow or the other non-licensed scarecrow head that's around.

You know me and my obsession with holiday minifigs...