Lyichir

The investment in Nexo Knights and the large amount of media is not at all atypical for a "big bang" theme. The main difference, if any, is how INTEGRATED the various sets and media are thanks to the Nexo Powers for the app, but even that's just one more step on Lego's path to digital/physical integration (you could easily draw a comparison with the "app bricks" from last year's Ultra Agents sets). And not all such themes become evergreen by any stretch of the imagination—most, like Chima and Atlantis, experience a strong first year followed by a gradual decline. They don't have to "bomb" for that to happen; they just have to be on a general downward trajectory when the decision of whether or not to continue developing sets is made. Next year's sales will probably make a far greater difference than this year's in terms of whether Nexo Knights continues beyond the initial three year plan or draws to a close in 2018.

They're not on the Elves site yet but ARE on the main Lego.com videos page: http://www.lego.com/en-us/videos/themes/elves

Misfortune's Keep is excellent, having built it myself a few weeks ago. I might even consider it one of the best vehicles any Ninjago villain faction has had. It's not perfect (one particular issue is that the cannons have a nasty habit of unloading if you tilt the vehicle forward), but otherwise it has great functionality and a very unique look.

Hm... maybe. The shadow trap piece arguably qualifies as a weapon, though, particularly the way it's used on some of the Beasts. And this year includes a lot more weapon recolors than last year, in which the Toa's axe and sword parts were the only weapons available in more than one color and were themselves only available in two colors each (the crystal blade piece, by contrast, comes in six colors across all of this year's sets). In fact, if I wanted more weapon variety this year I'd almost prefer to have more of those weapons from last year, many of which were nice and versatile and are sufficiently different from the crystal blade to avoid being superfluous. Also, we've gotten a nice stable of useful structural and functional elements, including the new torsos, the gears from the Creatures, and the Unity Piece (and even more if you branch out to parts introduced in Star Wars like the torsos and back covers, the former of which will also be appearing in the summer Bionicle sets). Ultimately I prefer those sorts of parts to things like weapons which are often bulky and hard to use, while doing less to actually expand building possibilities.

That would also be a fantastic fig. Possibly more suited to such a book as well, considering she is an actual knight in armor.

Trans. Fluor. Reddish Orange (Trans-Neon Orange) and Trans. Fluor. Green (Trans-Neon Green) aren't the only colors this works with—there are actually three others. Trans. Fluor. Blue (Trans-Medium Blue) is the third color that's actually named as fluorescent by Lego, and glows fairly brightly despite being much glassier than the other fluorescent colors under normal light. Trans. Bright Green (the color introduced in the Atlantis theme) also glows under a blacklight. And SOME Trans. Bright Orange parts glow under a blacklight, though in that case it's much more inconsistent than the other fluorescent colors and some parts in that color will not glow at all.

I doubt it's any more than a shout-out—same as the Sentai Mountain graphic from the Nindroid MechDragon. But awesome nonetheless! To be honest, it kind of reminds me of the way many, many AFOL sci-fi MOCs have used repurposed Exo-Force stickers over the years!

Personally, my hope for the Book of Knights fig is an unarmored King Halbert. No idea how likely that is, though...

They're definitely stickers—but on that note, I think they're holographic/foil stickers, sort of like some of the old Exploriens stickers. No idea whether that distinction makes them more or less interesting for Space builders than a more traditional logo sticker would be. In terms of sci-fi in general, Nexo Knights continues to introduce interesting new parts (many of them well-suited to Space builders) in the summer sets, including new Tr. Fl. Reddish Orange windscreens, a brand-new 8x6 wedge piece, and angular axe blade pieces in Tr. Yellow. And while it's not really a Space theme (despite strangely being sorted into the Space subforum rather than Action Themes here on Eurobricks), an Exo-Force logo appears on 70592 Salvage M.E.C. in the Ninjago theme!

Hogwarts Castle is a bit of a special case... while there were four Hogwarts sets over those nine years, that was over the course of twice as many movies. And not only were many different parts of the castle included in the various movies (and consequently, the different set versions), but the castle ITSELF actually changed and grew over the course of the series, with each movie introducing new setpieces. Heck, the ability for the castle to reconfigure and rearrange itself as needed was written into the books themselves! For most film locations/vehicles, that isn't the case. A new X-Wing, for instance, may make adjustments to better match the subject matter or add new functionality, but for the most part the original subject matter (the target of any licensed design) remains the same. That said, the Pirates of the Carribean license has been inactive for several years now, so it would not surprise me at all to see some repeated subject matter (like Harry Potter got when the theme returned from a hiatus in 2010). And that goes double for subjects which return in the newest movie, possibly including the Black Pearl itself.

Interesting theory. And not entirely implausible, considering they already managed to get Billy Dee Williams to reprise his role as Lando in The Lego Movie...

If this'd happened to you a day earlier you could've passed it off as a joke...

Sorry, but you've got it the wrong way around. The version on LDD is the ORIGINAL version of that lightning piece, before the sides were reinforced in later sets. So no, not new.

That is really weird. If you got a replacement torso in good condition and it had degraded that much within a week of you owning it (despite that torso having been from an older set in the first place), I'd think it'd have to be an environmental factor. But I'm not sure what the best solution to that would be. If humidity is the issue as you suspect, maybe you should consider getting a dehumidifier for your Lego room.

It looks like enough space for the Elves, as well. I don't think it's that bad. Make it much bigger and it'd be hard for kids to carry around, rather defeating the purpose.

Sorry for only getting to this post now. Yes, we had to send them back, though they did send us a shipping label to use to do so. Mind you, we might have hypothetically been able to keep the set we received instead of the ones we'd ordered... but we really had no interest in keeping those more expensive sets, and ethically, the choice was quite clear.

Keep in mind that while handheld releases for Ninjago have been the norm, so have multiplatform video games for theatrical movie releases. The Ninjago movie will give the theme a much higher profile than it's ever had even as a highly successful cartoon on TV, and as such there would probably be no better time for the series to make the jump to home consoles.

Think you meant to post that in this topic.

As I said on Flickr, this is amazing!

Wow! Excellent detective work! Looks like Supergirl will be appearing in a starter pack or something after all.

Even if some of the Skull sets linger on shelves longer than that, that's probably more an indication that those SPECIFIC Skull Villains didn't sell as well. That's far from a new thing for Bionicle—the traditional release strategy of releasing a large number of sets at a comparably small variety of price points means that some sets are almost invariably going to outsell others (this happened even back in the days of clone sets, with less popular colors like blue and brown typically sticking around long after their more popular red counterparts had all but vanished). Eventually any lingering sets will wind up being clearanced. In general, looking at what hasn't sold can tell you a bit about the popularity of those specific sets, but unless the full range is still there on shelves it won't be much of an indicator of the success of the theme as a whole.

We may be the minority among people who used to like Bionicle, but we're also the minority among people who STILL like Bionicle. Older Bionicle fans who grew out of the theme have basically nothing in common with Bionicle's current target audience, whereas older Bionicle fans who have continued to observe and follow the growth and evolution of constraction have a much better insight into what current kids could see in the theme. And by the way, the theme's target audience certainly aren't going to complain about the theme being "rebranded Hero Factory", because if they know about Hero Factory at all then it'll be what they grew up with, and they won't have an illegitimate hatred of it like older Bionicle fans tend to. So if that's what you see older fans complaining about, you can pretty much rest assured that their opinion has virtually no bearing on what the theme's actual target audience thinks. It's more versatile because you're not limited to clunky pre-built torsos and limbs that come in an absolutely pathetic range of sizes. Your point about Technic compatibility is fair, but do keep in mind that today's Bionicle sets feature substantially more Technic-based construction than any older Bionicle canister sets (including a greater percentage of basic Technic parts by piece count than any of those older sets) and that's WITHOUT the superficial and frankly unnecessary use of Technic to attach shells. You can do a lot more with a Hero Factory leg beam than you could with older parts like Piraka or Toa Metru legs, in part due to the wide range of leg beams and in part because the parts integrate two types of connection points rather than one. And that's not even getting into the new Bionicle's preference for custom torso constructions over repetitive uses of pre-made torso pieces. You'd wager wrong. There have been all sorts of amazingly complex and titanic builds done with CCBS. As for simplicity, the nice thing about CCBS is that it provides a dynamic range of possibilities. A beginning builder can start with easy-to-snap-together skeletons and graduate to larger, more complex custom builds. In that sense, it's very similar to G1's sets, save for the fact that more diversity is possible in builds even without having to resort to totally custom solutions, thanks to the modular system of shells and beams offering a wide range of possibilities. I personally think that a distinctive silhouette and a diverse range of physiques imbue a heck of a lot more personality than excessive and often incoherent detail on every single part of a figure. You might disagree there, but I think most people in the field of dynamic character design would side with me on that. Similarly, I assumed that by "flat" you were referring to the set builds, rather than to the simpler textures—and by that measure, 2015's sets are significantly less "flat" than most of the sets from Bionicle G1. That would not explain why they're substantially more successful than Lego's old Technic-based Star Wars figures, or why they're also more successful than the less impressive Super Heroes figures released in the CCBS's infancy. They may not be successful just because they're CCBS, but the fact that they're CCBS doesn't seem to be hurting them, may actually be contributing to their success, and that success might in turn contribute to CCBS itself becoming more popular.

My brother and I will be there again this year! It'll be interesting to see what it's like... they seem pretty desperate for attendees, or at least that's the impression I've gotten.

If they did a version for 3DS, it'd need its own toy pad/portal. The 3DS does not have a USB port and as such the existing toy pad could not work with it, at least not without some sort of wireless adapter.

Wow, lots of statements with no basis in fact. Guess what? The opinions of people who grew up with Bionicle OUTSIDE of the organized fan community are NOT the same as what the public thinks—not by a long shot. You are talking about people who are far removed from Bionicle's target audience, many of whom "grew out of" Bionicle a long time ago. Their opinions are probably LESS similar to what modern kids think of Bionicle than the organized fandom, not more, for the simple reason that most of them have little awareness of the modern state of Lego and constraction themes in general. Your assumption that CCBS is a major reason constraction is allegedly failing is also flawed. Firstly, because CCBS is MORE versatile, modular, and Technic-compatible than most of G1 Bionicle's overly specialized parts (which were exceptionally limited when it came to their proportions). Secondly, because it assumes that creating a large titan with CCBS is impossible just because it hasn't been done in sets before, when in fact MOCists including actual Lego designers have done just that (and if you don't have Kardas on hand, do yourself a favor and rebuild him—his design has not aged well and could be achieved just as well if not better with modern parts). Your complaints about CCBS sets being "flat and uninteresting to the eye" are not universal and apply just as much if not more to G1 Bionicle sets (especially compared against modern Bionicle and Star Wars sets). And your assumption that CCBS itself is unpopular ignores the fact that by all indications, the Star Wars constraction sets have been a massive success.