Karalora

Woodland Hills, CA continues to get some of the new(er) parts. I found Chocolate Cake Guy's head (love those buck teeth!), the Chinese gown, Year of the Tiger tile, figure skater outfit, the video game controller, violin, red beanie with braids, navy tux torso, black puffy jacket with hot pink sleeves, teal dress top with pink polka dots, tan cowboy hat, mad scientist jacket with green stains, and probably other stuff that just happens to slip my mind atm. There were still plenty of light blue and teal brick costumes, blue pugs, and other stuff. Worth checking out if you're in the LA area and having trouble finding parts from the last year or so.

Yeah, that's not an unpopular opinion at all.

Oh my, can you imagine how mad that would make people who "invested" in one back then?

I think I speak for everyone here when I say: Literally what are you talking about?

I knew I was missing something! Light blue and teal were both present.

The store in Woodland Hills, CA has some of the new parts now. I got an entire clown (including the trans-red balloon animal) and a chocolate cake guy minus the unique head. Also saw parts for the blue pug costume, which isn't exactly new but I don't think it was there on my previous visit.

That's exactly my point. Santa Claus as we know him is a secular folklore character with barely-acknowledged religious underpinnings. So is Mother Nature/Mother Earth. The main difference is that in the latter case, the religious underpinnings are even less acknowledged. If TLG got it into their heads to make a Mother Nature minifig, the fact that the image originates with pagan earth goddesses such as Gaia would not stop them.

I don't think TLG would shy away from a Mother Nature figure on religious grounds. They made Athena, even calling her Battle Goddess, and Mother Nature is easily cast as a folklore figure like Santa Claus, rather than a religious one per se.

Very cool!

Come to think of it, chessmen would make more sense as its own, separate CMF wave. There are six shapes (King, Queen, Bishop, Knight, Rook, Pawn) in two colors for a total of 12 possible minifigs.

I guess proper nesting dolls split at the widest part for just that reason. She's still extremely cute.

Nice!

YAY! Here...we...GO! Date Night Girl: It would have been so wrong to have the Date Night Guy without the person he's going on a date tonight with. She is adorable. You know the two of them together would be so sappy-romantic that everyone else in a 50-foot radius would spontaneously develop cavities. The Valentine bunny is a good addition to the slowly growing plush collection. Reptilian: Eh, I don't care, he still seems more trustworthy than some of the guys currently in office. What a fun concept, especially with the bonus head where the mask is only starting to slip! (It's too bad we can't really have goofy conspiracy theories like these since they always, always wind up being covers for grotesque antisemitism.) Knight Templar/Knight Hospitaller: Why do I get the feeling this is why you introduced that big heater shield with Prince Charming? The religious overtones would probably keep LEGO from producing it for real, but it's a great concept. The swallow-tailed flag would be superb to have in whatever designs they did come up with. Nesting Doll: Love her! I always find nesting dolls to be oddly charming. Is the body of the big one hollow so that you can put the small one inside? Lost opportunity if not. Mother Nature: I need her. Today. Immediately. I have a similar concept I made using existing pieces, but...look, I want the hair with the flower crown, all right? (Plus if we had a hair-with-flower-crown mold, they could make it in different colors and then I could finally make a May Queen minifig!) That globe could be used in all sorts of scenes, from classrooms to astronaut adventures. Gaul: He's perfect! The droopy mustache, the helmet and braids (which would also look lovely on a lady Viking), the shield design, the bright striped trousers, the chest scar! (He didn't get that in battle...those are claw marks!) The wargamers would be drooling. Black Chess Queen and Black Chess King: I'll address these two together, since they go together, and...welp. Now the chessboard is finally complete. You seem to have gone with a black = aggressor, white = defender aesthetic, which is a little odd since in chess white moves first. I guess dark and light associations are just that strong. I like the hint of fangs in the Queen's grimace. Goo Monster: How fun! You've brought back the trophy as scaled-down humans, which I thought was extremely clever with the Giant. This monster doesn't look very happy to be a monster. Maybe he just needs a suitably gooey habitat to live in. Bricklayer Pig: And now we have all three! I can see that trowel coming in handy for City construction scenes. Should we expect the huffing, puffing Big Bad Wolf in Series Z, or will one of the existing anthro wolf minifigs have to suffice? Harpy: YESSSS! I know a lot of people besides me have been hoping for one of these! I think if TLG did pull that trigger, they'd use the existing Chicken Suit torso mold, but these severe wings really suit the character. Plus it would be so easy to just swap the head out for a nicer one to make a friendly harpy (which isn't mythologically accurate at all, but let us have our fun). Sandman: This is another case where I didn't know I needed it until I saw it here, but now I MUST have it! He's perfect! The soft gradient on his outfit with the stars! The moon emblem on his cap! That whimsical beard! Giving him the cloud tile instead of the standard black rectangle! He's so charming! Steampunk Robot: LEGO...just give us a steampunk theme already, will ya? I'm not even into steampunk per se, but I have loved every single figure with that aesthetic that you have designed. Where's the new gear piece you mention, though? Retro Gangsta: I guess calling him what he really is wouldn't be very LEGO family-friendly, would it? Nevertheless, this is one groooovy cat, ya dig, soul brotha? Just looking at him fills my head with 70s funk music. Repurposing the HP wand as a knobbed cane is a clever move. A.I. Soldier: It's okay, we can tell this is Robocop with the serial numbers filed off. The Classic Space logo might be a little out of place--that's always been a cheerful, even whimsical theme, but this character type is a wee bit dystopian. Dino Girl: Good call. It ain't just boys that love dinosaurs! The triceratops hood is a good counterpart for the T-rex one. And of course, we have a new cosplaying dog! Soon the dogs will be able to hold their own costume party! Overall: This might be as close to a "nothing but hits" wave as we've ever seen from you! Terrific genre variety, and even the plain City figs are ones I would definitely pick up this time around. Bravo! And now we gotta wait for MAY to see the grand finale!

It's time for the HYPE!

During Dr. Dox's time research, he found evidence that there had been a timequake once before...or after...or at the same time? Anyway, timequake is a thing that can happen, and apparently a timequake at some point caused...or will cause...ANYWAY! Due to a timequake, the Universal Cogs are scattered across the time stream, each one in a different era, and only by causing another timequake can he hope to bring them together and reassemble the Cosmic Clock, giving him power over TIME ITSELF!!! MWAHAHAHAHAHA!

I can't speak for anyone else, but I like it! It could be pure fantasy or have more of a steampunk aesthetic like many people are hoping for. I suspect LEGO would veer away from putting "death" in a main character's name, though. Maybe Lord Doom-claw instead?

Not to derail this thread, but I've been wondering...what is the Moon Warrior/Night Protector supposed to be, exactly? It's a very specific look and it doesn't fit any broad fantasy or spec-fic archetype that I'm aware of. Was it a designer's unique pet project that got folded into CMF because it looked cool? I'm not complaining or anything, it's just...odd.

I remain (foolishly?) hopeful that it is happening, it's just that development is a slow process. I'm finding my thoughts difficult to articulate, but I think there might be more details to negotiate when it comes to turning LoZ into LEGO sets, vs. doing it with Mario. People care about the lore and aesthetic of Zelda to an extent that they don't with Mario.

Pretty much everything @Clone OPatra said. Any one movie is not likely to have a large enough cast to support a CMF wave alongside whatever characters are already represented in the sets. By the same token, most sprawling franchises like the MCU run into the problem where any character too far in the background to be included in a set is not interesting enough to be collectible. The LEGO Movie wave got away with it because the whole movie was populated with minifigs that could be as quirky and meme-generating as the designers wanted, and I suspect the main reason the LEGO Movie 2 wave failed is because the movie itself didn't do so hot. It really makes me wish they would keep going with Disney theme parks sets, because that would provide the perfect excuse to keep the Disney CMFs going.

It makes more sense when they have a licensed CMF line running parallel with actual sets for the same IP, since they're already paying for the license and might as well get some more use out of it. (And in fact the CMFs can provide more of an incentive for people to buy the sets, since the extra characters offer more options for scenarios.)

Commander, you're new here, so you might not have picked up on the culture of this forum yet, but this is needlessly hostile. We can disagree as to whether a given minifig design would be a good idea without cussing each other out (or censored-cussing).

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Please oh please let this be more than a rumor! I have recently gotten back into LoZ in a big way and with the Super Mario line I have been hoping beyond hope that TLG and Nintendo would extend their partnership to cover another historically important game franchise!

It's all about perception, and to most of the general public, that look is associated with Nazis first and foremost. Not everyone has our grounding in genre fiction.

She does look rather Nazi-adjacent, however, and despite the appeal of the design, I can see TLG being very cagey about producing such a figure IRL.

I just want to reiterate that even when a figure in this project doesn't thrill me, I still recognize the quality of the design and how much it looks like something LEGO might actually create. You know what you're doing, for sure.