Lyichir

That makes sense—news personalities tend to be far more locally recognizable than your average celebrity cameo. I'm curious whether that might have played a role in the delayed UK release. Obviously it's not the only possible reason, but it could have been a factor.

Curious about the phrase "nickeled and dimed"... you seem to be assuming that the newer cape material is more expensive, and I've seen nothing to actually give me that impression? Mostly, I've seen the two materials used alternatively depending on the specific need, be it for a stiffer or a more flowing fabric. And I think the former probably better suits coattails, since it conforms to the shape of the figure better. Anyway, welcome to Eurobricks!

The Bounty doesn't have a whole new track system for a roller coaster. Those kinds of parts probably don't come cheap—they're fairly large and represent five new molds (in addition to the two new molds for Nightwing). In any case, the manor still comes to less than 10 cents per piece—not too bad considering it's a licensed set!

Was this ever up for debate? They have the same voice actor, and footage from The Lego Movie appears as file footage on a newscast. His character arc also transitions well between the end of The Lego Movie (where he gets very little development outside of recognizing that Wyldstyle can do better than him) and TLBM (where he actually becomes a better person and learns to actually open up to other people). There's no real reason to assume that he's NOT the same character.

Huh? He appears in like a one-second visual gag. How would you expect us to be able to know his sexual orientation? And furthermore, why would it matter?

There's no easy answer to this question. Bricklink is garbage when it comes to describing metallic colors, describing them subjectively by look instead according to their actual formulation, which leads to incredibly inconsistent labeling and lumping multiple distinct metallic colors under a small number of arbitrary labels. 2006 was a complicated time for silver, since color 131 Silver was briefly replaced with 296 Cool Silver during that year, which seems to have been pretty inconsistent and would often, but not always, turn out lighter and be considered "Pearl Light Grey" on Bricklink. At or before the end of the year, 131 Silver (often, but not always, considered "Flat Silver" on Bricklink) was reintroduced as Lego's main silver color. Axonn's parts would probably be 296 Cool Silver, but how they would be categorized on Bricklink would depend largely on how dark or light individual parts appeared.

It's taken me a while to really process my feelings about the movie. It's not great, especially not as great as the previous two Lego movies, but I wouldn't consider it bad either—at least, not in the conventional way adaptations often turn out bad.

Licensed content is no less original than real-world subjects. Both are expressions of an existing idea, concept, or subject in a new medium (Lego).

I think next year just might be the year we finally get a modular Lego store. It would be a good way to scale back from the massive Assembly Square, offering a more traditionally-sized modular that nonetheless has an incredibly broad appeal and iconic subject for Lego fans. It'd pair well with the Assembly Square while it's still available, considering the AFOL apartment and Café Corner box in that set. And it would pair well with Lego's big anniversary next year. I don't have any inside knowledge of course, but it would seem like a logical enough choice.

That hasn't stopped Elves! I'm sure a large mechanical dragon vehicle would be distinct enough from the dragons in other themes.

I also think it's possible that the new dragon might be regular Lavender instead of Medium Lavender. I sort of hope so—so far none of the dragon colors have been repeated, at least for the adult dragons. One possibility (though probably not especially likely) is that this new dragon could be a grown up Fledge! It's also nice to get a new wind elf (the first one since Skyra!), though it would have been neat to finally get a male wind elf instead.

It's definitely not the direction I expected Elves to go but I'm excited nonetheless! The animals look really cool, I love the new parts I can see, and the unique brick-built weapons each Elf gets seem very cool! It does feel worryingly conclusive, though, featuring a castle for the villain in the first half of the year... I do hope this still isn't the end!

Eh... It's close enough for me to see parallels, in any case. "Classic Space" isn't really a theme so much as a catch-all category for space sets before the introduction of other "sub-brands", and Futuron could arguably be seen as a continuation of the same general faction.

Agreed about TLM2. That's really the make-or-break movie for the continuation of the franchise. In the meantime, though, I would not be surprised to see WB hitting the brakes on the aggressive expansion of the franchise until they've seen the results of that. I don't expect to see them greenlighting a bunch of new movies in the series until then, unlike their rapid response to TLM's breakout success. A shift to more movies based on licensed themes would be a bit disappointing to me, though, considering original themes tend to be some of my favorites. Then again, set-wise, The Lego Batman Movie basically took a licensed theme and infused it with the kind of unbridled creativity I typically see in my favorite original themes, so a shift toward that wouldn't be all bad.

There's a certain sort of logic in Monstrox and his forces becoming the Blacktron to Merlok and the Nexo Knights' Classic Space... I'm definitely hoping to see if I can make a Blacktron II-esque bubble cockpit out of those Trans. Bright Green TIE Fighter windscreens!

They are technically alternate builds, but the thing is that unlike the alternate builds in, say, Creator 3-in-1 sets, or the ones from the Lego website or magazines, the alternate builds on the back of boxes were mainly intended as inspiration for the kinds of things you could build with the set rather than explicitly being intended as specific alternate models you were intended to build yourself. So inspiration models is a little more specific to their purpose and prevents confusion with the kinds of alternate builds in modern sets.

Now that we have something more concrete to discuss than "there will be sets", maybe we need a Lego Elves 2018 discussion topic...

Toys R Us declaring bankruptcy is not a great development for Lego, but it's also a development that basically affects the whole industry. If anything, Lego might stand to lose less from that than its biggest competitors (Mattel and Hasbro), both of which are publicly traded and have taken a hit in the stock market over the news.

Wouldn't make sense to design AWAY a function, especially if it tested well with kids. I imagine making a set as appealing as possible would be a much greater concern than making it adhere strictly to canon.

Well, all of The Lego Movie (and presumably, by extension, TLBM) essentially took place in one family's basement. But they're not the only ones in the world with a Lego collection... there could presumably be thousands of discrete universes that barely interact with one another (save for occasionally, at conventions ).

Entirely possible that themes that don't appear in a U.S. catalog still get released as exclusives for one retailer or another. It's happened before (Ultra Agents, Bionicle).

It's a shame. I've never been a member of the site, but every now and then when I'm looking for old statements from Lego designers I'll find a long-vanished Classic-Space.com link that I can no longer access...

Being a quick joke doesn't preclude them appearing physically in the future... I certainly wouldn't mind a fig like that!

I don't think the expensive sets "cannibalizing" one another's sales is as big an issue as you allege, simply because I'm skeptical of Lego even expecting the vast majority of their audience to buy more than one or two. The largest sets are produced in much smaller quantities than the smaller ones, and generally have a much longer shelf life than the more "entry level" sets that are rotated from year to year. And I get the impression that the latter are where most of the money is made. Beyond that, more and more themes are being represented by those sorts of sets—I don't think Lego is necessarily expecting most buyers of the UCS Millennium Falcon to be interested in the Minecraft Mountain Cave. It may be the case that mega-fans who want both will have to choose between the two, but I'm pretty sure Lego is just as happy with expanding the audience of the people who want one or the other, not to mention having people who continue to want more and may eventually buy accordingly instead of waiting around for "the next big thing". I think if we were getting to a point where large D2C sets were failing to sell at acceptable levels, we'd start to see more clearance sales on those big expensive sets, and Lego scaling back their production, but so far, I haven't seen either as being the case. I think a lot of the people here don't seem to have much faith in the safeguards Lego implemented after their brush with bankruptcy. They keep a much, much closer eye on what works and what doesn't these days, and don't hesitate to reevaluate individual themes from year to year based on the latest results. If the UCS Falcon had sold more poorly than expected, you would probably be safe to assume they wouldn't attempt another model that large for another decade... but even that doesn't seem to be the case, based on its first-day sales.

One other thing that Flame Yellowish Orange, and for that matter, Cool Yellow, are good for is for minifigures. When the standard minifigure skin tone is Bright Yellow, having separate yellow hues (one lighter, one darker) can make the difference between a yellow-clothed figure and one who looks nude.