Lyichir

Nope, not yet. But reddish orange is still a pretty new color, I wouldn't be surprised to see full length legs at least before long.

I don’t really feel like it makes a difference if they do realistic or fantasy/sci-fi animals since for the most part it just depends on what theme it’s coming out of the budget for. I wouldn’t really expect fantasy animals from City the same way I wouldn’t expect non-fantasy animals from Ninjago. I guess for mixed genre themes like the CMFs it makes a bit of difference but there we tend to get a bit of both—I don’t get the sense that one is taking away from the other.

Realistically, I don't see something like the F1 sets' licensing happening in a ton of other scenarios. In this case, Lego licensed with Formula One and every team, in part for the already heavily licensed Speed Champions/Technic lines, and to get their money's worth out of the deal and not leave out consumer segments they expanded that to City (aimed at lower age ranges like 4- to 6-year olds) and Duplo (for 2- to 3-year-olds). In cases where there's not a big picture, overarching licensing initiative like that, I doubt Lego would bother with that much licensing in the City theme—not only does it cost more but younger kids are unlikely to have much major "brand loyalty/fandom" for more everyday subject matter compared to what they might have for a motorsports team.

My Pick-a-Brick order from last year finally came in today! Was able to upgrade the solar panels of the Blacktron Cruiser with corner-cut tiles like I planned, if I get a chance I'll take some photos of the finished upgrade.

Built the Donkey Kong & DK Jumbo set. Generally a very fun build, and distinctive since it's the only kart for a heavyweight character and the only one not based on Mario Kart 8 (being based on DK's signature kart from Double Dash instead, hence the rear rollbar that a character can hold onto). Hitting the target with the shell launcher is surprisingly tricky. While I generally don't mind stickers, a part of me does wish that the 2x2 tiles for the wheel hubs in these sets had been printed since it'd ensure that the decorations were consistently oriented the same (something that doesn't matter when used for wheel hubs like this but would be beneficial if you wanted to reuse them for something else). Square or rectangular stickers are easy to orient consistently, but round stickers on round parts less so. I haven't made a ton of progress with custom karts on Stud.io. I have versions of the Cat Cruiser and Tanooki Kart partially done (which I picked since they were nice looking "signature karts" for digi-fig power-ups that already existed). I wish I could come up with more though... it'd be great to come up with custom karts for other distinctive Mario Kart characters like Toadette, Birdo, and Funky Kong who exist in Lego already.

By the way, apparently a reddish orange Lego brick suit minifigure is on the way from Build-a-Mini (albeit with non-matching regular orange legs). Still, the reddish orange arms would be perfect to swap for the white right arm on last year's Build-a-Mini space jumpsuit, if you wanted the colors to match the City Space jumpsuit from this year's Galactic Spaceship. I ordered some reddish orange 2024 construction torsos from the online Pick-a-Brick that have yet to arrive, but since the brick suit would probably look less off with non-matching sleeves than the construction gear, I might opt to buy a couple of those brick suits to source the arms from and keep the construction torsos as-is for my dad's City collection.

I mean, obviously they're working with Lego, but Lego isn't the one ultimately making those decisions, just the one approving the final version for production. After all, the Brick Cross Train Station from the same program had no issue using only three out of four track segments and leaving one extra unused. Treating this as some decision that was forced on the project rather than something the creator themselves decided on and followed through with feels like blame-shifting.

Important to note that Lego is not the one making changes to these. Unlike Ideas sets (which are redesigned by internal designers after being selected, including the potential to introduce new prints or other parts), Bricklink Designer Program sets are only redesigned by the project creator themselves, according to both the part selection available to them for production and their own whims. So while there may be changes required as a necessity of the program's limits (for example, substituting available parts for ones which aren't currently in production), Lego as a corporate entity or Lego employees are not the ones deciding on those changes themselves.

Awesome! The use of that new skylight piece as a sci-fi windscreen is really cool!

Yeah, I figure since they're on the lower end of pricing for architecture they're probably still strong sellers, and their broad focus compared to individual buildings probably gives them a lot of appeal (including as souvenirs of those cities, which each have flagship Lego stores).

Dang, I already ordered some 2024 construction torsos for the reddish orange arms on the online Pick-A-Brick to outfit a couple of the BAM space jumpsuit piece from last year with (in place of their plain white right arms, so that they match the new color-coded jumpsuits from this year's spaceship set). If I'd known this was coming this would've been a great alternate source for those—especially since my pick-a-brick order is probably still a ways away from arriving. Maybe I'll do that anyway... feels like these brick torsos might be more useful with mismatched arms than the construction gear would be.

Once again, I feel like a Ninjago City set without civilian figs would be terrible. You need at least a few normal people to staff/populate the various facilities, not just heroes and villains. The civilian figs here aren't all my favorites (I wish the restaurant chef had a more distinctive or traditional outfit like some of the old-world figs in earlier sets, for instance), but I really appreciate the warehouse worker (who plays a vital role that isn't occupied by any other figs here), and replacing all the civilians with random show characters wouldn't be an improvement as far as I'm concerned.

It's ridiculous. The legal ground is dubious even with the court system as compromised as it is. Mostly it's probably meant to intimidate—less scrupulous companies might fold rather than enter a costly legal battle with the president's right hand man—but I hope Lego has the sense to stand up to this kind of bullying. As an American one of my more pressing concerns (at least staying on the subject of Lego, since there's obviously a lot of scary non-Lego-related news in the air) is the tariffs mentioned in the same article. Lego for the U.S. is still manufactured mainly in Mexico, and while the U.S. has historically had pretty favorable prices here compared to some countries, that could change if Lego has to pay atrocious fees on every shipment past the border (especially if the tariffs aren't retracted soon). There's a U.S. factory under construction in my home state but it's still several years out (and given how chaotic things are in this country right now, anything could happen between now and then to jeopardize that).

It’s a small thing but I appreciate the shirtless Zane from the small mech set being here, makes it easier to cross that smaller set off my wishlist since it wasn’t my favorite but I wanted the fig.

I would argue that the Palace Cinema would also qualify for "nightlife" (the boxart even had a nighttime setting like the Jazz Club would later).

Wow! Your limited description made me assume that this might be a smaller MOC (maybe one building or dungeon from the game), not the whole castle town! Absolutely incredible layout, and I love that you've included detailed interiors (even for things like the castle where the interior was not actually explorable in Ocarina of Time itself).

Oh, the new Ninjago City set looks nice (and I appreciate the smaller scale which will make it slightly easier to find a place for it among all the others). Can't wait to get the full reveal so I can pore over all the little details.

Built the Qilin set yesterday! When the two sets were revealed I wasn't too sure about it, since it reminded me a little of the somewhat blocky and poorly proportioned Lion Guardian set. But having built it I like the Qilin a lot better. The proportions are very solid and the detailing is great too. The new figs are great—I love the monkey/dragon emblem on the back of MK and Mei's jackets, and the new versions of Sandy and Mo (who is back to his old mold with a new expression) are great too. A shame Pigsy is the same as last year, but his food cart is a nice side build.

I expect the new bee, beetle, and ladybug prints from Friends will be perfect for some bugs (their more realistic, diminutive look would work well for Animal Crossing). Though having more would be great too!

Aw, very cute! I love the big eyes—reminds me of jumping spiders.

Yeah, some of these definitely feel like the kind of thing you have to have room for. Like the siege encampment is a neat idea, but the shelf I have my Lion Knights' Castle on only has room for it—no room to add a whole siege party to it. But yeah, I feel like the Mushroom House and Village have been some of the most appealing yet, in part because they're NOT just trying to be massive expansions to existing sets/themes, but rather something fairly unique in and of themselves. There's no need for them to fit in next to official sets when they have such a distinct design identity that's not trying to compete directly with official space/castle/etc. releases.

In my case this was definitely their second box at least—my previous batch of figs from the series was also from Wegmans, and I was only able to get some of them that time because the box they had on the shelf had already been picked through. So it might be worth checking if your local one has restocked as well!

Given that there are three sets coming out later in the year I have to imagine there'll be at least SOME new characters (every set other than the Julian polybag has had at least one new character). No telling how many, though. I wonder what sort of sets will be next? Obviously the Museum would be a high likelihood, especially since Blathers could likely reuse Celeste's head mold. I'd also love to see the missing Sable and Orville, but don't know how likely that is yet—since their respective facilities where they'd most likely be seen have already been released without them, I think they might possibly be saved for a CMF series or something similar... While I'm sure a lot of people are hoping for town facilities and special characters, I kinda hope there's at least one villager house, especially since having more colors/types of doors/door frames/windows would make it easier to make additional characters' houses (potentially including some of the characters who we already have who don't yet have homes of their own). The options so far are surprisingly limited, especially given that Lego went through the effort of coming up with special door/window molds for the theme. What might be really nice would be an open-ended set themed around house customization, sort of like the "Maker Packs" from the Mario theme—with lots of door/window/wall/roof options for expanding your village. I'm not sure what the best subject for an Animal Crossing D2C set would be, to be honest... a playset to go with the others doesn't seem particularly likely given that even some of the larger subjects in the series like the museum would feel pretty out of scale with other existing sets if you went all out with them. Maybe you could make a cool standalone playset out of something like the main street from New Leaf or the city from City Folk, but I dunno how likely they are to do something that big and impressive based on a less recent game. A brick-built version of a popular character like Isabelle or K.K. Slider could possibly be fun, but I don't know whether that kind of display piece would resonate with Animal Crossing fans the way a big Bowser or Piranha Plant do. They might save any potential Nintendo collab D2C for either proven stuff like Mario, new franchises for Lego like the Zelda set, or broader Nintendo-focused stuff like the NES and Game Boy. Come to think of it, if they ever do a GameCube set, that could potentially be relevant to the Animal Crossing theme, considering the series got its start there and was a major seller on that system.

Went to Wegman's to pick up a prescription and they had a nearly full box of the figs—was able to get all five of the figs I was still missing, including ones I was especially excited for like the Wolfpack beastmaster, pirate, and cat lover!

If you mean new recolors, I don't think PAB has ever offered parts that weren't already produced for other sets.