Lyichir

No worries about that. I've added them to my ignored users list and won't engage with them myself any more. I know firsthand how much work my sister puts into her posts, and how sensitive she is about trying to make economical use of language. So I don't have time to feign respect for people who not only rudely ignore the entire thing just because they're longer than the average post on here, but make a point of telling her that they refuse to read it just to rub it in her face. But you're right, it serves no purpose to stoop to their level.

The classic 2001 version! Fits with the other Hidden Side easter eggs being justified by J.B. being in her mid 20s and having been a fan of those sorts of 90s and 00s themes.

Earlier I was looking at the instructions to some of these sets and noticing some fun details, like the bottles of soy sauce and sriracha on the counter of the food stand in the Monkey King mech set, or the use of both the ice cream swirl piece as well as frogs (!) in white in the Inferno Truck set, presumably as differently shaped dumplings. A refrigerator/freezer in the "panda store" also has banana pieces in white... anyone know what kind of food item those are meant to represent? I'm also not sure anyone here reads Chinese, but if they do, I'd certainly be curious to know what some of the signage in these sets translates to! I could probably do a rudimentary job in Google translate but someone who speaks the language could probably translate it more easily and more accurately.

There won't be. No offense, but it's a ridiculous idea that would undermine this theme's distinct Chinese identity in favor of tying its story inextricably to a theme that already ran its course. Not everything has to be connected, and in many cases creating tenuous connections between two separate stories does nothing but weaken both.

Maybe the problem is you? It must be nice to be able to come to wild and absurd conclusions, and then when somebody actually bothers to put in the effort to deconstruct your bogus arguments piece by piece, dismiss the work they put in out of hand on account of wordiness. No need to actually defend your claims when your attention span is the size of a gnat's.

Nobody knows specifics and they're unlikely to at this stage. I will say that as somebody who has enjoyed every wave of the theme greatly, I'm not seeing substantial discounts on even the debut wave yet, which would usually indicate that sales haven't had any sort of substantial dip yet. We'll see if that changes when the summer sets release.

Not every theme is a perennial Ninjago, and to be honest expecting any theme to be is perhaps being even more optimistic than Lego themselves (who set pretty modest initial goals, usually three years of product launches at most, compared to that). At the same time, I think expecting a theme with this level of investment put into it to falter after one wave is, if anything, too pessimistic—Lego has yet to have any of their "big bang" themes fail to to last more than a year, even including early pre-Ninjago ones like Atlantis and Power Miners that were not planned with more than one year of sales in mind! They have a pretty strong track record in that respect, with even themes that fall short of expectations (Legends of Chima, Ultra Agents, etc.) tending to last two to three years. Yes, these are difficult times, but from many indications so far Lego's struggles so far have been to meet surging demand despite interruptions at the production, distribution, and retail stages, rather than struggling to find buyers for its products. With many families spending more time at home the demand for toys like Lego seems almost like it has risen compared to "normal" circumstances.

"The Chinese" don't have "their own" series of bricks based on that. An individual Chinese toy company (of which no singular company has market dominance) has one. It's impossible to say whether Monkie Kid will catch on at this point, and as you say it will be in a competitive market. But Lego is entering from a competitive position, with Lego's reputation in the country growing and a lot of work put into tailoring not just sets based on Journey to the West, but an entirely new IP with an animated TV series and accompanying sets, to the Chinese market. We'll have to see how it fares, but give Lego a little more credit than assuming that they don't know there will be competition.

I'd done similar a couple years back. I'd chalk it up to not designing custom decorations for it and not taking into account how much more of a difference they'd make in making the design stand out compared to a more complex brick-built solution.

Don't see the value as in doesn't feel like getting your money's worth or as in just disliking those two sets' designs? Both sets are expensive (more expensive than you'd usually expect a theme to reach right out of the gate), but their piece counts are definitely up there in the range you'd expect of those sorts of prices (a little on the pricier side than Creator Expert sets but cheaper than licensed sets of that price in themes like Star Wars).

It doesn't really look any less like Lego than other CGI Lego cartoons like Ninjago or Chima, and honestly looks a lot more like Lego than more stylized ones like Friends. The characters are still visibly minifigure-like and the sets resemble their toy versions. As somebody who has long enjoyed the energy and expressiveness of things like hand-drawn Lego magazine comics, it's honestly a dream to see Lego finally taking a similar approach in an animated medium.

I saw that comment when it was posted on Brickset. Don't have a lot to say about its political slant (I'm not keen on getting into Chinese territorial politics and it seems pretty tangential to discussion of the Lego theme in the first place), but I disagree vehemently that infusing the theme with elements of modern China is somehow disrespectful. On the contrary, I think European and American depictions of places like Asia or Africa often have a bad habit of treating them as "fixed in time", focusing on decades or even centuries-old elements of their cultures rather than reflecting how non-European and non-American countries have modernized alongside the rest of the world. In that way, I think that Monkie Kid's approach is well-considered since it can reflect both the ancient heritage and modern society of China, rather than just one or the other.

Definitely. Also... it looks SO GOOD. I've wanted a Lego show to have this level of hand-drawn animation for so long, and this STILL managed to exceed my expectations. Do we know yet the episode count for this show? Or where/how it'll be distributed in the U.S.? I imagine it'll likely be some streaming platform since it seems like a more expensive project than Lego's various YouTube series but I'm not sure a major channel would be airing it considering the fact that the sets themselves seem like they'll be a somewhat limited distribution.

To be honest I find it a little charming how they're all identical but have different names. Special mention for "Bob" (the odd one out among Snort, Grunt, and Roar) who is distinguished by having one horn turned the wrong way around. Also when reviewing their names I noticed for the first time General Ironclad, who comes in the ship set and IS a little different from the others, with different arm and horn colors as well as a cape and spiked pauldron. Story-wise, the focus is probably gonna be on Red Son, Princess Iron Fan, and the Demon Bull King as the main antagonists—but I wouldn't rule out the faceless goons serving as a bit of comic relief like Nuckal and Kruncha did in the Ninjago pilot.

Oh, cool! Yeah, that's about as much space as I expected. Not a lot but I suppose you could fit some modest bunks or something in there in a pinch. Also digging the katana storage on the sides of the "cockpit", which would be concealed when the dojo walls are in place.

I don't suppose it would be too hard to mod it to have an interior below decks if you were willing to sacrifice the function. I've been trying to reverse engineer parts of it on LDD and the center hull seems roomy enough for at least a modest interior (though still much smaller than the one in the Ninjago Movie version).

While there are plenty of good possibilities, there's a part of me that holds on to the vain, selfish, incredibly unlikely possibility that if nothing else shows up to fill the niche Elves left behind, Elves might be able to come back. Failing that, though, I feel like I'd really like something in a similar vein—maybe something a little more steampunk, with a setting sort of like the webcomic Girl Genius? There's also a huge opening for a sci-fi type theme, which could take all sorts of forms. Personally, I think a mech-focused anime and manga-inspired theme like Exo-Force could potentially work even better with mini-dolls than it did with minifigs, since mini-dolls already have more of an anime-esque aesthetic than classic minifigs and putting the action in mechs could help to make up for their comparatively lower range of articulation.

Ultimately I'm not sure it needs any more of one, to be honest. The only interior features the bus had that this lacks are the microscope and bed. This one still has a fairly roomy cab with two seats and a desk with a computer in the back, much like the bus had, and the mech/turret portion has two more seats—adding up to enough space to fit the original ghost-hunting crew plus one, if you wanted.

What interior? The back end of a real fire engine like this one would be devoted almost entirely to storage for equipment (accessed from the exterior), hoses, and a large water tank for putting out fires when out of range of a hydrant. I don't see how this is a worse use of space than those features. I'm still extremely impressed with how this set goes together. I also can already spot some nice easter eggs too, like a Rocket Racer decal on one of the side compartments!

There are two retailer-exclusive Friends sets this year as well. So that theory's out the window too. I don't think there's any hard and fast rule about which themes get retailer exclusive sets and which don't.

I sort of expected it would be something like that. Rather than sharing the Hidden Side design language, that sheet ghost seemed clearly inspired by the classic ghost fig's facial expression, which led me to expect it to appear as an "easter egg" for some other spooky or Halloween-themed set.

I think the more specific reason is to make the sets with the dice spinner playable if you don't have all of the sets. In particular, the biggest set is the only one that feels like it could provide a reasonably full game experience on its own—the other three sets with dice spinners (71717, 71719, and 71721) only have smaller "modules" that, on their own, probably wouldn't provide much of a game experience without other sets to connect them to otherwise. So for those smaller sets, including a paper extension for the game allows you to get a better "feel" for the gameplay, and hopefully leave you with a positive experience that incentivizes you to pick up some of the other sets to add to the game.

Not gonna lie, that's the OPPOSITE of what I want. Getting new, updated takes on those classic costumes is much more interesting to me as a long time collector than getting the same exact versions (or incrementally adjusted versions) of the figures I'd already gotten years ago. Even Pink Zane was a bit of a letdown for me, especially since it was the only Zane we got in any of the Prime Empire sets (instead of a brand-new Digi-suit or Avatar like the other Ninja got). The fact that the Legacy costumes feature new details to better differentiate the ninja from one another is an asset in my book. Also, I'd assumed that the new Legacy costumes were meant to substitute for both the Tournament of Elements costumes as well as the "Rebooted" costumes. Considering that, a Zane that draws from Zane's Rebooted costume and is designed to complement the other Legacy suits from this year would be quite nice. Heck, maybe even a new Titanium Zane as well—I'd love to see a new take on the Titanium Dragon, given how good dragons have gotten in recent years.

Believe me, I agree. This year's new Legacy costumes are so poorly distributed... Kai only comes in one set, Cole and Jay only come in another, but Lloyd appears in both of those as well as a set with only him? There's so much that feels incomprehensible about the Jungle Raider set in particular, from the fact that it doesn't even include a single antagonist to the fact that the only fig is a Lloyd who comes in two other sets to the fact that it was released directly alongside the similarly named Thunder Raider. Compared to last year's Legacy sets (which, granted, had a whole wave to themselves instead of sharing waves with other Ninjago story arcs), there's so little rhyme or reason to which sets got updated this year. But again, I can only hope that if the "Legacy" sub-brand continues, that might help to make up for the things that this year's sets skipped over. If they can double back to Season 2 for the Golden Mech and Destiny's Bounty sets this year, then there's technically nothing stopping them from filling in some of the gaps in Season 3 and 4 with some additional sets next year. Heck, even this year there might still be room for a surprise. With Ninjago City and Ninjago City Docks retired now there's still a vacant niche for a Ninjago D2C set. Which isn't to say that niche will be filled this year or at all, but it remains a possibility especially since Lego has generally been better about securing leaks this year than they have been in previous years.

In descriptions on a Czech shop site they were described as "shadow sword of deliverance" and "ivory sword of deliverance" (obviously Google translated so the actual English names may vary). Both actually appear in the biggest set of the wave—you can spot the other behind the very clever "lava fall" entrance to the cave. This coming wave is actually comparatively light on "collect them all" style MacGuffins. EDIT: Just editing because I noticed something about this coming story arc. Is it just me or is it one of the best so far when it comes to the distribution of the six ninja? All six of them appear in at least two sets each—Nya, who is often the least common ninja (which never really struck me as fair), even comes in three! The baddies are fairly well-distributed too. From the looks of it the only figs who are exclusive to a single set are Wu (in his small dragon set), the new golden-haired character in the biggest set, and the "Spinjitzu Burst" ninja variants (which, granted, leave out three of the ninja once again). It's a shame the other two main "subcategories" for this year have been so much worse about that. Poor Zane never got a Digi-suit in the Prime Empire sets OR a Season 3 variant in the Legacy sets. I'm still holding out hope for the latter... since some of this year's sets do revisit seasons one and two of the show, it'd certainly be a dream for a future wave to include, say, a Legacy Ninjacopter that included not only an updated Zane but also an update of Pixal's classic appearance!