Lyichir

Personally I'd love both regular and IRREGULAR civilians. Namely, I'd love some sort of village set that features some of the brown "farmer-bots" seen in the TV series (in addition to some of the more typical human peasant figs). Maybe we'll see something like that next year. After all, the Kingdoms Mill Village Raid and Fantasy Castle Medieval Market Village were both released in the second year of their respective themes.

Yesterday my brother and I built General Magmar's Siege Machine. In addition to being a phenomenal set in general (seriously, I love the transition from battering ram to siege tower), I'm really impressed with how it parallels Axl's Tower Carrier. The two are about the same size and have similar proportions, and I love that kind of consistency—it gives the impression that "large six-wheeled siege engine" is a common class/style of vehicle in the Nexo Knights universe, and that these two are variations on the same basic idea. At the same time, they offer extremely different functionality and aesthetics, to fit with their differing factions.

I think all of those things are extremely unlikely to happen. Kids losing interest in physical toys: It's been predicted for years. Hasn't happened yet. Lego's fear of this happening was part of what led to their reckless innovation in the early '00s, but it turned out that that fear was overblown and Lego's re-emphasis of their core business of physical toys is what led to the company's resurgence. Superheroes getting stale: Are you kidding? Superhero media has been going strong for decades. The glut of it in recent movies is largely just a side-effect of improvements in special effects allowing live-action movies to do justice to the epic storylines and characters who have been going strong for the better part of the past century. Star Wars becoming unpopular due to overexposure: Again, I'll believe it when I see it. Besides, if that happens, chances are the brand will simply adapt, with fewer films and an emphasis on other media—like the brand had been doing for several years prior to The Force Awakens, with little ill effect on Lego's bottom line or the Star Wars brand's popularity. Finally, as an addendum to those last two points, it's not like those themes are irreplaceable for Lego. Even if superheroes and Star Wars went kaput against all odds, something else would rise up to take their place in the pop culture landscape, and there's nothing that'd stop Lego from jumping on to whatever new craze emerged. The company is more adaptable than people give them credit for.

Personally I'd be a little curious how well actors like Daniel Radcliffe could portray their younger selves even in a voice role. Granted, he was already an adult by the last few movies, but it's still a potential issue when you're considering how to recreate early roles by former child actors. For that matter, I don't know whether Daniel Radcliffe would be interested in returning to that role again in the first place. He's had to go to great lengths to avoid being typecast after those movies.

Again, you just described City, especially if you take away the mini-dolls and the color schemes, which are two of the main things that make Friends different from City. Your two criticisms from the previous post were unrelated to the list of sets, and for that matter I would question whether things like gyms, pizzerias, or beach bikes have anything to do with stereotypes. There's also a difference between reinforcing stereotypes and delivering the audience what they want. You could make an argument that themes like Lego Friends shouldn't have things like beauty parlors or veterinarian clinics or bakeries that purportedly reinforce stereotypes. Here's a counterpoint—why shouldn't Friends have those, while City remains filled with stereotypically "boyish" interests like fire engines, race cars, and police chases? For that matter, why doesn't Lego City have businesses like beauty parlors or veterinarian clinics or bakeries, and why does it seem to abhor things with pastel color schemes like Friends uses (color schemes that are, I might add, far from unheard of in real life)? Take things that could be perceived as "girly" out of Lego Friends, and suddenly kids who ARE interested in those sorts of things can't find them in ANY theme. A lot of criticisms of Lego Friends seem to ignore these factors. Lego Friends was specifically designed to fill an unfilled niche in Lego's product categories. If the theme did in fact only feature "stereotypical" content those criticisms would have more weight, but in fact the product ranges are quite diverse. What you're left with, in calls to remove the pink and the doll-like characters and everything else girls have been proven to love about the theme, is a dedicated effort to delegitimize girls' interests (even when those interests are harmless in and of themselves and are not presented as the only option) in favor of a status quo that is falsely perceived as unisex but actually is absent of anything feminine or girl-oriented at all.

While that would never happen (it'd remove pretty much everything that has made Friends a success, not to mention make it indistinguishable from other themes like City), nothing on this rumored list confirms that it's NOT happening. Which leads me to think you didn't even pay attention to what the list said and popped into this thread just to gripe.

I don't know what advantage (if any) there would be to "giving fans a break". The last time Ninjago went without sets for a full wave (Summer 2013), it resulted in fewer sales when the theme did return, and it took time to build interest back up to where it had been prior to the theme's near-cancellation. I doubt Lego is looking to repeat that with a high-profile movie on the way.

It really is. In general it's a huge improvement over similar blister packs in the past which only featured one or two unique figs, if that. I hope this sort of strategy continues—the Minecraft skin packs seem to follow a similar formula, and it makes a huge difference between a pack that is a "maybe" and one that is a must-have.

While there are certainly a lot of characters and subjects for Thor sets to depict, I do think it's likely that Spider-Man will get more sets than Thor: Ragnarok if only because of Spider-Man's proven marketability. It's no coincidence that he's been one of the most commonly featured characters in the Marvel Superheroes theme even before he was a part of the cinematic universe.

Personally I was fairly impressed with the latest Pirates wave, despite its small size. The sets it did get had some nice details and techniques, including forts that made use of brick-built detail instead of large printed wall panels, and figures and sets inspired by the classics. While a bigger wave with larger sets would have been nicer, I do think that in terms of the quality of the sets we got was nicer than the 2009 wave, which tended to have less interesting and complex builds. As for a lot of the other comments about this, there seem to be a lot of misconceptions circling around. The idea that Lego is overreliant on licenses these days is inaccurate, since licensed themes still make up only about a third of their sales and that hasn't changed for the past decade or so. Themes like City, Ninjago, and Friends are consistently among Lego's best-selling themes.

...Puppies. The word you're looking for is puppies. Anyway, not much that can be gleaned from these descriptions alone. The gym, swimming bath (spa? bathhouse? pool?), and pizzeria are all interesting new subjects for Friends, and it's nice that another one of the five main Friends is getting a house (after Olivia and Emma). Hopefully like those other houses it'll include her parents!

It would definitely be tricky to do something like that (since modern alternate builds basically require that the set be designed with all of those builds in mind), and I don't see Lego bothering considering that the traditional modulars are so consistently successful even without alternate builds. I generally don't think we'll ever see an inverted corner modular—not only is it a rarer configuration for real-world buildings and businesses (since most streets don't just make right angle turns all of a sudden), but in terms of presentation it's much less appealing than a facade or corner configuration, since both of those can be photographed from angles that highlight the fronts of buildings, whereas any angle on an inverted corner will prominently display the unfinished sides of the building (unless taken from a back alley or something).

I have to question whether a minifigures series would have been as practical for the Rio games, considering that the audience for Lego in South and Central America is much smaller than it is in Europe or North America. With that in mind, a more traditional building set like the one they offered (which does a great job of promoting Lego as a construction toy) may have been considered a better fit for this year's games than a series of figures (which could supplement other kits but do not offer any substantial building experience on their own). Beyond that, the aftermarket value of figs versus sets probably never went into the equation. Lego would have no reason to care whether or not you were inspired to buy the rest of the Team GB figs off of eBay, because Lego has already made all the money they possibly could off of those figures now that they're retired.

I do personally think that we're unlikely to see further D2C sets based on Disney parks, even if this one IS successful. And that's mainly because the appeal of this particular castle is much broader than most other park attractions. Specifically, this castle is the one that appears in the title card for every single Disney movie (often along with Tinkerbell, hence her inclusion). Even someone who has literally never visited a Disney park will recognize it from that alone. If that weren't enough to add to the appeal of this one, the many, many references to classic Disney movies and the iconic Disney figures. By contrast, even hugely popular attractions like the Haunted Mansion or Spaceship Earth have less universal recognition and appeal. Also, it's worth keeping in mind that the price point of this set puts it in a class above your average D2C set like modular buildings or even the Simpsons House. Even among buyers of this set (which will likely remain available for several years), I doubt that many will be eager to spring for another similarly priced purchase year after year.

From my experience most store displays definitely use a more traditional hot glue, at least in part (I've never bought/tried to disassemble them so it's possible that they also use some sort of solvent-based welder, but glue residue is often clearly visible on the final model).

Except I personally consider the characterization of Makuro in the books (a wealthy industrialist who at the protest of his skeptical financiers reworks his successful business into a humanitarian organization, and very nearly loses his own faith in the cause due to the Factory's early failures) to be plenty deep, much moreso than making him a generic corrupt businessperson would be. And while he was featured too rarely to really give that chance to shine in other media, making him secretly evil would also require him to be featured more if it were to be done right. Turning an underdeveloped hero into an underdeveloped villain doesn't make them a better character, it simply wastes what little character development they've already gotten by retconning it all away.

I can understand some of these criticisms, but I think others are a little overblown. Take outfits for example—while I do think there could stand to be more outfits in some cases (particularly for distinct characters), I don't see a problem with, say the Friends characters in the summer camp sets sharing outfits with the ones from the Amusement Park sets (since both cases call for casual summer outfits). In general, despite having named characters Friends' closest "boy's" analogue is not Ninjago, with its abundance of characters and outfits, but rather City: both themes feature more "down to earth", real-world subject matter, and as such both themes tend to reuse figure parts heavily rather than necessitating a brand-new outfit for every situation or a brand-new face for each character. Also, in general, mini-dolls are probably even more expensive to produce than minifigures (thanks to overmolding, multi-surface printing, and a generally more complex shape), so it's no surprise that reuse of parts might be deemed even more necessary. I'd also disagree about the lack of characters in Elves. Firstly, the animals in Elves ARE generally depicted as every bit as sapient as the Elves themselves—the fact that Naida plays checkers with Delphia and Flamey works not one but two jobs should be evidence enough of that—so I would generally consider them as desirable as mini-doll characters. Meanwhile, Elvendale is generally shown to be larger and less populous than Heartlake City, with most sets taking place in the wilderness or similar areas rather than in homes and businesses. It's worth pointing out that while a few of the Elves webisodes HAVE had to include background Elves not featured in sets (especially as background characters in the show's larger Starlight Inn), they have still never been so essential to the plot as to be named. More elf characters would indeed be nice but with the modest number of sets per year, I don't see it being very lacking for mini-doll characters. I don't think the criticisms about inconsistency in body/head types are that big of a deal either. While more consistency would be nice, a certain amount of variation is appropriate, and some of that variation is a natural consequence of the aforementioned reuse of figure parts (which has a more visible effect than it would with the similarly-shaped standard minifigures). As for the Elves, they're, well, Elves—considering that they already have differently shaped eyes and ears, the male figures having bigger noses as well isn't that odd (especially considering that them even being "teenagers" by human standards is up for debate). Regarding the doubling up of characters, while it could be nice to have more characters or more costume variations, it's also not a bad thing for people to have multiple options for getting all the characters they want. And in Elves, other parts of sets like unique animals make up for the occasional duplicate elf. In fact, only one Elves set so far has gone without a single new animal or figure (this year's Dragon School), and as a die-hard fan I actually APPRECIATED being able to cross that set off my wish list in order to free up more of my budget. I do think that child characters would be a huge plus, and if the rumors of Leprechauns from next year's Elves sets are true, we just might finally get a smaller body type. I do not, on the other hand, think that a male main character in Friends is necessary. While more male characters in general could be a plus, Friends is aimed primarily at girls, so the fact that its five main characters are all girls should be no surprise. I don't think the comparison to female characters in Bionicle, Ninjago, and Nexo Knights is truly fair. When Friends is one of only three or so themes that actually have a majority female cast (compared to an abundance of male casts lacking for female representation), I certainly don't think a more "balanced" gender ratio among the main characters is really necessary or even preferable. I do agree that exclusive figures in the DK guidebooks would be preferable to the reused or reconstituted figures they currently get. However, Friends isn't the only theme that sometimes suffers in that respect—even Ninjago once advertised an "exclusive" minifigure in one of the guidebooks that was anything but. I do also think that the likelihood of a side character from other media being featured exclusively in one of those books is exceedingly unlikely, as even for other themes the exclusive figs are almost always main characters—Ninjago always has one of the ninja or Wu rather than, say, another Elemental Master or even a variant of another side character, while Super Heroes books featuring some obscure Batman variant rather than a previously undepicted hero is practically a running joke by now. So even if we did get exclusive figs in those books, I think they'd generally be much more likely be variants of the main cast, rather than characters who have never been featured in sets before. One thing you didn't mention in your rant that is a major criticism of mine is that, as an Elves fan, it's frustrating that the summer waves have featured cloaks and this year, hoods for all of the main characters except Farran. Last year it could possibly be excused on the grounds that there wasn't room for Farran in the two summer sets that year, but this year Farran is present in the Precious Crystal Mine set yet once again goes without the accessories that set the summer figs apart from the winter variants. Just because he's a boy shouldn't mean he's not allowed to accessorize!

I'd say that if you're expecting the ninja to age consistently over the course of the series, you're overthinking it. They have always sort of existed in a vague space between teenagers and young adults and they're likely to stay that way unless they actually pass the reins to a new generation of ninja—it's in Lego's best interest to have a set of protagonists that their kid audience can relate to.

If they do expand to Disney franchises AND go beyond popular existing themes like Star Wars, Marvel, and Indiana Jones, I could see that being an excellent idea for a pack.

Not necessarily. I mean, Legends of Chima had a full year of sets after its series concluded. Mind you, Mixels may be a slightly different case as a co-production by Lego and Cartoon Network, but that doesn't necessarily mean the sets couldn't outlast the series.

One other idea I've had is a hardware store. Lego has plenty of tools and accessories that would be well-suited to that kind of business. Of course, that's the kind of thing that would probably work best paired with some other subject as well.

While not typical Friends sets, I'd love to see Dimensions packs for the Friends theme, with mini-builds based on some of the colorful vehicles in the theme. I'd also like to see sets with younger children at some point—perhaps a babysitting, daycare, or playground set? Younger kids do show up in some of the Lego Friends media, but there's no real way to depict them with the current mini-doll designs.

I don't see why you'd think redesigned projects on Ideas would be "disrespectful". It's not like those redesigns are done without the knowledge of the project creators, who are usually very involved in the development of the final product. As for your question about the use of Ideas projects in movies, that runs into huge ethical (if not legal) issues, since users who have submitted projects to Ideas did not do so with the intent of those projects being used in a multi-million dollar film without any sort of compensation. It's much easier and less sketchy to design the materials for those movies from scratch (with the help of both official and fan designers contracted to work on the movie).

See, not only does that sort of storyline lack originality, I would dispute the idea that it would add any substantial depth. It's a cheap twist, nothing more, substituting shock value for any sort of meaningful revelation or nuanced storytelling. If anything, the actual books we DID get explored things with a great deal more depth and nuance. The question typically raised was not whether the Factory was "good" or "evil" but rather whether the Factory's goals were achievable and realistic—was a centralized peacekeeping force a practical goal, or did directly engaging the lawless elements of the galaxy directly create more chaos and uncertainty than there had been in the first place?

Possible, but I'd say unlikely. Firstly, office buildings are rarely considered "exciting" or appealing, either for kids OR for the adults who toil in them. Secondly, even with Octan rebranded as "Octan Energy", big oil companies or other megacorporations don't exactly have a stellar reputation—heck, the Octan corporation was made the villains of The Lego Movie itself largely because of the connotations of that sort of big business! I think if you wanted to try and get that sort of set to succeed, you'd have to combine it with some more popular subject to get it to succeed, at the very least—for instance, perhaps part of the property could be under construction, to allow for more traditionally successful subjects and play scenarios and deemphasize the monotony of office work.