Lyichir

I certainly wouldn't mind if we got a "filler wave" with some of the scenes and characters that hadn't been adapted into sets yet. There's certainly enough to cover already to potentially create several appealing sets. Unrelated to that, I'm hoping that next month we start to get reviews of the upcoming sets! It'll be great to get a better look at them all, including stuff that's not included in the released pictures including what the full selection of collectible Baroque Works dossiers will look like.

To me I feel like Jaller/Jala would be the easiest character to release OUTSIDE a CMF series—since he wouldn't need any new molds he doesn't need the same kind of budget as other characters, and since he has kid proportions he'd be perfect for, say, a trick-or-treater in a Halloween promotional set or something like that.

New Elementary posted a preview of the new gear shifter elements. I'm afraid their usefulness goes over my head as an extremely casual Technic fan, but thought some of y'all might find the video interesting:

I dunno how good anime-based sets would be, to be honest. One Piece's cartoony artstyle is very appealing but I feel like a lot of the appeal would be lost if you "flattened" the varied proportions and looks of the characters into standard minifigure designs. An advantage of adapting the live action version is that, with all of the characters portrayed by actual human actors, it's easier to adapt their look into minifigures without sacrificing their likenesses. Plus, it's less overwhelming to adapt one season of the live action show at a time than to draw from over 1000 chapters of manga or episodes of anime.

I dunno if I agree. That one seems almost too busy and cluttered, and relies on a lot of electronics for its looks (yet does not do actually useful things with those electronics, like keep score in any way despite the multiple non-functional score and multiplier labels). I kind of prefer the simpler brick-built arrows and lights on this one along with the fun mechanical feature of the astronaut elevating based on your performance (a novel way of creating a performance-based objective without electronic scorekeeping). That's not even getting into the tacky pseudo-Star Wars designs of its themed models. It's not exactly a Classic Space homage beyond the figure choice, but I see plenty of reasons I'd prefer this new set over this clone set that comes across to me as more style over substance.

The Arlong Park set I ordered arrived today and I just finished building it! All in all, fantastic set. There's definitely some things that would've been nice if the set included (like Arlong's huge saw-tooth sword, Zoro's outfit from that scene, and some more fishmen), but what is included is top-notch. The main function works great, and all the minifigures are fantastic. I got really lucky with the wanted posters in this one—three different posters (Gold Roger, Alvida, and Mihawk), none of which I'd gotten in the Going Merry (where I got Luffy, Buggy, and two Kuros). I still need the posters for Don Krieg and Arlong himself, but I also still am thinking about getting some of the other sets so I might still have some chances to get them randomly before having to order them separately. I'm almost tempted to try sketching up some of the carnival stalls that weren't in the set on Stud.io to see about expanding it (I dunno if I'd go about it in real life since I don't really have a long-term display planned, but it'd be a fun creative exercise). There's an artbook for the first two seasons of the live action series coming out in a little over a week and I'm thinking about getting that for inspiration and reference.

I do agree with that, yet I still think there's something lacking about that Zinnia. She really needed a new hairpiece, which is part of why I was skeptical about minifigs in this theme—since you'd need new molds not just for most smaller Pokémon but also for most human characters to really do their designs justice. A shame, because Omega Ruby is one of my favorite Pokémon games and Zinnia and the Delta Episode are a particular highlight.

Yeah, I think it makes a certain degree of sense that the piece limit is more a matter for the project creators than for the finalized sets themselves. Part count is a pretty arbitrary measure anyway since it's only somewhat correlated with more important production factors like size and budget. It mainly is used for Ideas projects because an upper limit is important to keep fan designers from getting too crazy with scale, and those more specific, relevant factors are much less easily measurable for fans. Still, it is a little amusing that the famously titanic Godzilla would be the one to "break the scale", so to speak. Looking forward to seeing what the final set ends up looking like!

Oh, thanks for the heads up. That one was on my wishlist, so I went ahead and ordered it. Not only is it a great set design, but compared to other characters who will appear again in future seasons (and thus are more likely to appear in future sets as well), Arlong isn't likely to reappear so I'd like to get him while I can. Plus it'd be my first Luffy with the stretchy arms, the outfits for the other Straw Hats who do appear in it are nice, and I wouldn't mind a few more wanted posters to see if I can fill out that collection more. I expect the same reason I'd like to get Arlong before it's too late is why the other Season 1 sets aren't retiring yet—characters like Buggy and Shanks (not to mention the Merry) are staying relevant, so it makes sense to keep them on shelves at least until a new set with them comes along..

In fairness I bet a lot of kids who grew up with classic space played with the sets that way as well. Much like the "sensors" on ships that could be interpreted as lasers instead, a lot of details in those days were sort of left up to interpretation.

Hm... Zinnia looks kind of meh to me... the unfitting hairpiece combined with the blank expression just fail to evoke the character. I suppose that's part of the issue with going from a very distinct anime style to a regular minifigure. One more reason to be glad most of the sets opted against a minifigure scale approach, I suppose.

A part of me feels like some of the Toa might need new parts for their tools if they did them... classic pirate hooks would be undersized for Gali, and the regular axe blade looks a little too medieval for Lewa IMO. I wouldn't need all of the Toa to have perfect replicas of their weapons (after all, Tahu's fire sword is only roughly similar), but it wouldn't hurt if they had parts that were a little more geometric/mechanical looking, and if they were made generic enough they could see good use elsewhere too. Kopaka would be easy though, this blade would feel perfect for his sword, and a printed radar dish piece would work well for the shield. And for Pohatu as you mention foot printing would work well and you could add the new small boulder piece from the latest wave of sets as an accessory (which even comes in reddish brown in one of the upcoming Star Wars sets). I've also seen some great 3D printed masks and tools made by fans—so even if Lego themselves never follow up on this fig (and I still hope they do), the fan community is ready to step up.

I was referring mostly to the design side of things (being able to put reuse a mold in another theme with different colors/prints) and not PAB which often excludes parts somewhat arbitrarily. After all, as far as this mold is concerned the specific dalmatian print from the Disney set IS licensed, and a monochrome green puppy wouldn't be particularly useful for most people even if it did end up on PAB.

I don't have any suggestions for leg prints, but there's a new waist-mounted sword holder in the latest Ninjago sets that'd be great for Zoro. Obviously it can't hold three swords, but if we get a regular katana in white it'll be able to hold the Wado Ichimonji while he's just using his other two swords.

Being able to jump into another IP means that it's not IP locked—there's no shared ownership between FIFA and Disney, so that means there's no issue with it showing up in other themes as well.