Lyichir

These are both really good ideas! The fairground/carnival idea is one of the ones I've considered that makes for a coherent "subtheme", if they were to choose to opt for that at any point (instead of just the sort of general variety we've had so far). A haunted mall would be another concept that could potentially work as either a large set or a series of smaller sets. Other ideas I've had that don't necessarily fit the idea of a unified subtheme but still could be interesting concepts: A haunted airfield with a helicopter, plane, and/or hot air balloon (either haunted or equipped to fight the ghosts) A haunted farm (possibly with a haunted barn or tractor) A haunted construction site with monstrous construction equipment A haunted gymnasium to go with the school and the "Squids" basketball team. A haunted lighthouse A haunted ice cream truck/food truck

Isn't the one in the proposal just the Panda Suit Guy head from the Lego Movie CMF series? It looks like a fine solution to me. I'd be more worried about some of the other figures like Piglet and Rabbit, whose "hood" style headgear seems far less accurate to the characters and as such far less likely to be deemed acceptable by the licensor.

They're characters from the new "Lego City Adventures" TV series.

The fans who get them don't hate them. And their main purpose is to drive interest in Lego's presence at the con whether or not people win them. Pretty much every major booth has some form of exclusive on offer and Lego not having any available could lead people to overlook them entirely in favor of competitors.

It serves multiple purposes. From an advertising standpoint, it promotes brand values of inclusivity in a context that stays true to their brand's overall focus on children and families. By sponsoring a family play space at Pride, they can support diversity in a way that directly benefits children, rather than merely paying for a rainbow-colored float like other corporations. What better way to market to kids and parents at the event? From a business standpoint, participating in this way shows support for their LGBT employees and promotes Lego as a welcoming environment for potential new hires. Lego pretty frequently tops lists of the best places to work and actively participating in the community sends a clear message to adult attendees (including, undoubtedly, a good number of creative professionals) that that extends to people with different sexual orientations and gender identities. And of course, there's the moral standpoint: that supporting equal rights and minorities is unambiguously the right thing to do ethically. It may be common for corporations to have ulterior motives for supporting causes like that, but I genuinely believe Lego cares about making a difference in the world beyond just the ways that directly impact their bottom line. Sometimes that means taking a stand for causes, even if there's a slight risk that it alienates people who think those causes aren't worth supporting. And when you get down to it, doing the right thing is just as valid whether or not it's ultimately for selfish reasons. I for one applaud Lego for making this effort and hope that it does pay off for them, so that they have reason to continue supporting good causes like this in the future.

Eh... I'd hesitate to say that. The CCBS in particular was designed with a significant level of versatility in mind, with fairly basic shells and bones as a base that further detail can be added to (contrasting with earlier Bionicle parts which often locked particular aesthetic forms to particular building functions). Yes, even those parts were primarily designed to build articulated figures, but that's not much different from the sorts of "specialized" parts in other themes like castle windows, ship hulls, train bases, and so forth. Like those sorts of parts, they might not seem versatile if they don't hew to the type of building that they are best suited for, but they are good for their intended purpose and with creativity can be applied to other sorts of builds as well.

This is a key point. KIRKBI isn't Lego, they're the ones who own Lego, along with many other unrelated investments including real estate, renewable energy, and shares of various other Danish businesses. More information can be found on their website. This is unlikely to have much of an impact on the way The Lego Group itself makes business decisions or resource allocation. At best, it should hopefully allow for better partnerships between The Lego Group, Lego Brand Retail, and the Legoland Parks, relieving some of the tension that separate ownership of those organizations has occasionally created between them.

Eh... this is one of the kinds of Ideas models that I feel has a very weak chance of succeeding in review. It not only relies on a ton of retired and recolored parts (including some pretty improbable recolors, like transparent space wheels), but there are elements of it that wouldn't work physically at all (the CV joint halves as blasters, since those have a very loose connection that would literally fall off if you were to tip this forward). On top of that, it's a subject (a Classic Space spaceship) that Lego already makes plenty of and which doesn't give Lego any meaningful new consumer insights (Lego already knows spaceships sell, and they already know Classic Space has its fans, so they don't need an Ideas project to tell them those things) or for that matter create any new customers (since by and large people who care about Classic Space are already fans of Lego). Don't get me wrong, it's a neat looking MOC. But the most successful Ideas projects tend to be ones that are new and different, either in terms of IP or subject matter, and ones that are designed with the practicalities of a Lego set in mind. This doesn't really satisfy any of those criteria.

I would guess that the licensors in question aren't intervening in these cases because doing so is primarily Lego's role as the manufacturer of the legitimate product. Disney has a lot of licensing agreements with a lot of companies and I imagine their primary interest in foreign copyright cases focuses more on their core business of movies and TV. And in fact, part of Lego's impetus to combat knockoffs like this is to ensure a good working relationship with those licensors—allowing knockoffs of licensed Lego products to thrive could weaken their bargaining position when those licenses are periodically renegotiated.

I messaged capes4minifigs.com about it on Facebook and they said they'd been asked about it before and are considering it. After the reveal of this latest wave, I'm even more surprised that they omitted the cape from the castle set, given that they included the even less conventional "pipe cleaner" boa for Unikitty in one of the sets. If there were a final wave next year it's possible we'd get one, but just in case we don't it wouldn't hurt to have a third-party "non-purist" solution.

i was not trying to change anyone's opinion. I wasn't even DISAGREEING that a recolor would be nice, just that I understood why we didn't get one. But apparently trying to consider WHY something is the way it is, or admitting that I'm fine with it the way it is, is something that a ton of people seem to take personally. Honestly, I'm sick of it. It seems like I can barely voice an opinion, even a positive one, these days without somebody taking it personally and trying to make me out to be angry and irrational, rather than just someone who generally likes Lego and tries my best to understand the "why" of set designs. And being treated like that honestly DOES make me upset. I have enough crap going on in my life that I don't need to be cast as some sort of bully or bad guy just for liking Lego, one of the few escapes I have in a world that sometimes feels like it's crashing down around me. That's not what I want to get out of the community and the way things have been going I'm getting more and more disillusioned with this site and the AFOL community at large. Because frankly, if the community is making me enjoy Lego less instead of more, then there's less and less of a reason to be a part of it.

Oh, sorry? Should I be resorting to sarcastic personal attacks like you instead? I care about quite a lot, but I'm not going to complain about a good-looking set because it falls short of an imaginary version that I've built up in my head. That's the quickest way to end up dissatisfied with just about everything. I much prefer to form my opinions based on what a set actually includes. As far as I'm concerned Trans. Light Blue IS an actual color, and a useful one, albeit a much more common one than other transparent colors. But apparently "facts" mean something much different to you.

There are two ways to interpret minifigure scale: strictly (scaled accurately to the proportions of minifigures) or more loosely (scaled for minifigures to interact with but not necessarily to scale with the real-life subject that it's based on). The six or seven foot figure is a great example of why the latter tends to often be more common in sets—many real-life subjects are simply too large to be adapted directly to minifigure scale without fudging the proportions and scale to make them more practical as a playset.

Replying to you in multiple topics doesn't mean that she's following you around, it just means that, like you, she has an interest in multiple topics on this site and gets involved in discussions accordingly. Not everything revolves around you.

Zooming into the cockpits would decontextualize the characters from one another more, since both wouldn't be visible in the same scene. And personally, I love recolors... but I also don't see the reuse of an existing color as worth complaining about, honestly. The set looks good even with Trans. Light Blue, and if I wanted to complain about what kinds of new parts COULD have been featured in a set then I could complain about literally any set for that reason, just because no set is going to feature every new part I want. Unless there's a compelling reason why a set should have included a certain part (for accuracy or whatever), I don't see any reason to wish parts were arbitrarily a different color.

I mean... there's still different aspects of urban life represented. While Police tends to be one of the most common "subthemes", there's still a wide variety of other sorts of City sets released each year. As for the introduction of science-based careers outside the city limits, I honestly can't see why the founding family of Lego would object to it. Honestly I only barely understand why you seem to take it so personally...

I'm not Aanchir, but as her twin I think I can give you a similar response. We were both born in the early '90s. The City theme as it exists today wasn't even around then; we lived through Town, "Town Jr.", World City, and eventually, the entirety of the City theme. Compared to those themes, the increased variety of subthemes in the modern City theme barely registers as a change compared to those earlier paradigm shifts. But of course, City has never been either of our favorite themes. As far as "childhood favorite themes", the one that lasted longest was Bionicle, which changed dramatically over the course of its run. And while there were both changes I liked and changes I disliked, I can't think of many that seemed "senseless", let alone made me "angry". When Bionicle came back in recent years it was dramatically different from the version of it I grew up with, yet I loved the new take on it and was disappointed when it got cut short.

I wonder if 2020 will continue to have sets based on the new "Lego City Adventures" TV series? A classic police year could certainly include some of the new police characters.

And Lego City Undercover features buildings and landmarks inspired by ones all around the world. Like I said, they pick and choose features to create a sort of archetypal city, rather than basing it specifically on any one city or geographical region. Also, trying to debate Lego City "canon" is a little silly. The media is crafted to complement the sets (less so the other way around) and as such the features and layout of the city change as necessary to contextualize new sets and subthemes.

If it's as bad as you say I'd absolutely request a replacement. Maybe send a picture of the part to Lego along with the request.

I would point out that while there aren't "arctics" and jungles and volcanoes in the city, there ARE cities in the arctic and in jungles and on volcanoes. In fact those are probably more common features of cities than, say, a space center (of which there are relatively few worldwide). Lego City doesn't quite represent any one real-world city, so they pick and choose exciting subject matter and situate it as part of the City theme.

This is incredible! I love a MOC that recreates not just the aesthetic of a classic theme but also its functionality, and this is easily one of the top examples I've seen. The modular fighters of Blacktron II were one of the most notable features, so a ship like this that takes that up to 11 is a true work of art!

I think a big part of it is that, in general, it's sort of two degrees removed from what most traditional Lego fans think of as "Lego". Technic is one degree removed from classic bricks and plates, and most Technic-based constraction is sort of one degree removed from that. Constraction themes are also story-heavy, something a lot of older fans don't seem to understand the value of compared to traditional "open-ended" themes. And, especially for kids, they also emphasize a type of action play that can rankle adult fans who only build for display. This isn't to justify the level of derision that constraction often gets from older fans, just to explain it. The thing about Lego is that it can be big and broad enough to encompass all sorts of play and building experiences, and to write off one sort of that or another as "not REAL Lego" is irritating.

Those conversations in Sweet Mayhem's ship had a significant difference, though—they were conversations between characters in the SAME cockpit (and thus could use interior-only shots), not between characters in two different ones (which need exterior shots to contextualize the relative positions of the speakers). A less tinted color also helps both characters to be recognizable from outside, which both helps with the contextualization and narratively works better than the cockpit of the Systar Starship, which like Sweet Mayhem's mask from earlier in the movie serves to hide and obscure its occupants. Having the characters visible from outside also helps since the scene in question introduces a BUNCH of different, never-before-seen ships shared by multiple occupants, and thanks to the short length that you acknowledge there's not a lot of time to establish which characters are sharing which ships. All this is to say that since that scene is the only one with this ship in the first place, the ship's design has to stem from the role it plays in such a brief and frenetic action scene. Otherwise, I doubt we'd be getting it in a set in the first place. Also, sort of a tangent on the subject of Trans. Light Blue windscreens being common in City sets, while these particular ones aren't new I might as well mention that the 4x4 and 8x8 ones in the Space Palace are new to that set—something I only noticed due to having used them in a concept for an Elves mermaid castle MOC. Even for a common color like Trans. Light Blue you'd often be surprised how often only a Trans. Clear or Trans. Black alternative exists—and while those are all colors that can work for a theme like City, sometimes for sci-fi or fantasy subjects that bluish tint makes a world of difference. Actually, come to think of it, I wonder if the Trans. Light Blue was chosen for this set to imply that it could have been realistically rebuilt from the wreckage of the Space Palace? A lot of the parts in the set seem to call to mind that set's color scheme, and considering this ship being rebuilt fro the wreckage caused by Armamageddon, I could see how it might have been designed to reference the other existing models...

The recolors would be nice, but that wouldn't work half as well for its context in the movie itself, since the scene in question features dialogue between the pilots that works best visually when both are clearly visible inside their respective cockpits.