Lyichir

I agree with most of your post, but would like to clarify that Bionicle was not a Big Bang theme even in 2015.

Interesting. Were those the only two characters they discovered? It'd seem kind of weird for those characters to already be programmed into the game and not have there be other unused/early characters as well...

Losing the lavender makes it lose so much of its charm. Particularly the loss of the lavender rocks, which I'd consider to be one of the best new stylistic choices of this year's Elves sets. The door change is okay, but I didn't mind the lavender door, which was colorful and went well with Sira's overall aesthetic. EDIT: Also, on second glance, I can't help but be a little confused with your choices for the cellar. The change in window panes is a little odd for that kind of structure, and combined with the heavy use of dark grey makes it look like a random window into a rock rather than a small storage cellar nestled between rocks.

Oh, I'm sure that the Ninjago Movie might be a separate entity from earlier Ninjago stuff. But it will probably have the same characters (at least, as far as the heroes are concerned) and it would not be that abnormal to bring in some characters, vehicles, etc. from previous years even if they are tangential to the main story. As for your Avengers comparison, I don't know if it's the best. Even if characters from both The Lego Batman Movie and The Lego Ninjago Movie appear in The Lego Movie 2, I don't really expect any of the characters from Lego Batman to appear in Lego Ninjago and vice versa. Apart from the crossover potential in The Lego Movie 2, the Ninjago and Batman movies don't really have anything tying them together. Contrast Avengers, where even when completely different characters are used, the stories are still tied together somewhat both in terms of continuity (with shared characters like Nick Fury and events of one movie directly influencing the others), and in terms of subject matter (while Marvel's movies play with genre they're still pretty much all superhero movies of one sort or another). Personally I was thinking specifically about the Disney Princess theme, which may have its faults but has significantly more brand power and a lot more sets to base a game on. I imagine part of the reason there hasn't been such a game is gender expectations (with very few games aimed specifically at girls), but I do think there'd be potential in a TT Games take on those movies. Imagine the scene in Frozen where Elsa constructs her castle, only she has to actually build it with bricks from the environment! Imagine having to actually find the items necessary to get Cinderella to the ball, and assemble them into a fancy ballgown and pumpkin coach! It could definitely have potential, and probably would have more thematic connections than a game based on Disney movies in general. Sadly, I don't think the Lego Friends game was all that successful, so another game based on a mini-doll theme might be too much to hope for...

I don't see why it'd be "daft" to have separate games for the Lego Batman and Ninjago movies, considering that apart from being about Lego and ostensibly taking place in the same universe, the two probably have very little in common (featuring completely different characters, settings, and stories). Also, both videogames could easily be padded with content that wasn't in the movies themselves (Ninjago in particular has never had a full console game focused specifically on it, and could potentially integrate a lot of content from past years of sets and story). Part of me hopes that we might see larger games based on Nexo Knights, Bionicle, and Elves, which have so far only had mobile games since their launch. Or failing that, at least inclusion in Lego Dimensions. Also, one thing I've been wondering... why haven't we seen any sort of Lego Disney Princess game? We haven't even seen a mobile or handheld game like Lego Friends got, and there'd easily be enough content between all those movies to create a full console game if Lego and TT Games so desired.

The new suits aren't exactly the same, actually—if you take you'll notice that each of the new suits has some different details (it's particularly easy to see on Jay, who has a pauldron like his 2012 suit, and Kai, who has additional brown belts around his midsection).I think your observations about the ninja's "key attributes" are wrong too. Not only do I question where you got the idea of each ninja being better at those specific skills (since I don't recall most of those attributes being emphasized apart from Cole's strength), but Cole's super-strength was definitely on display in the Tournament of Elements as well—it just hasn't had as much emphasis since he became a ghost and his skills began focusing less on any sort of physicality.

I also have no idea what to expect from that casting, but I'm tentatively hopeful. Before The Lego Movie I never would've pegged Will Arnett as Batman, but that casting was basically perfect, so it wouldn't surprise me if they pulled off another unexpected casting like that.

Even "discontinued in constraction" is a bit of an overstatement—it just hasn't been used recently in Constraction, that's all. Colors phasing in and out of popularity for such a comparably small product category is far from out of the ordinary, and in fact Bionicle's return last year brought with it several colors that hadn't been seen in constraction in some time—namely Dark Orange (absent since 2003), Bright Green (absent since 2012), and Earth Blue (absent since 2010). Dark Green (Mata Green) last appeared in constraction in 2011 (in both versions of Nex from that year), and has continued to see use in System and Technic since then as well. In fact, it's arguably appeared in constraction every year since 2014 as well—provided you count Mixels as constraction.

The earlier book was indeed listed like that. Personally, though, I don't know if I'd expect this book to include another squirebot, if only because in the past when there have been two activity books per year in themes like Ninjago, they've often been split between the heroes and villains. So it might be more likely that this book would include a generic lava monster fig instead.

Man, everything I've heard about the movie makes me more excited. Knowing the identity of the storyteller doesn't decrease the quality of the story. I doubt Finn (or the Man Upstairs) will factor into this one much, though. As for TLM2, that's a few years out, and as such there's a lot they could explore with it. After all, a few years is a long time for a kid Finn's age. If the events in the Lego world are the results of Finn's playtime, what happens when he grows up?

Color me surprised. I wasn't necessarily expecting a reboot, much less one that changes things up so dramatically. Still, I doubt this'll mean the end of the TV show canon, nor do I think this movie will be bad. A bit of a shame, though, that this seemingly reduces the chance of a high-school based Lego Friends movie...

Everything we've seen about this movie (and the Lego Batman movie) suggests that it will be a part of the same "cinematic universe" as The Lego Movie. That said, I don't see why a movie like this can't be canon to The Lego Movie AND to Ninjago. Just because The Lego Movie mixed a bunch of themes together doesn't mean every sequel and spin-off will, and apart from minor stylistic differences, I don't see what would keep this movie from working with both canons provided that it kept things focused on Ninjago and Ninjago alone. Heck, even if it does feature other worlds, select events and characters from the movie's canon could still be carried over into the main Ninjago canon, just like they did with Ronin's debut in the TV series (which did not necessarily canonize the events of Shadow of Ronin but did maintain that the ninja had met and fought with Ronin before).

Do you have a source on that, or is it just speculation/fanfiction?

Those battle packs are great. I'll probably end up getting the Knighton one so that I don't have to pick up any of the $10 sets that include the Royal Soldiers.

So Lego just uploaded a of Let's Do This, the new Lego Elves song for this year. A version of the song had previously been available as an interactive video on the Elves website, but this version is a whole minute longer.I really, really, really like this song. There's something about triumphant power ballads that just gets me (probably part of why Gravity Hurts is one of my favorite Bionicle songs).

I don't think set numbers have anything to do with whether or not the movie is canon to the rest of the Ninjago story—either way, the sets will be branded as Ninjago and are most likely even being designed by most of the same designers, so I would be more surprised if the movie sets WEREN'T in line with the rest of the theme's set numbers. That said, I doubt the movie will be non-canon. At worst, it might be a side story that has little impact on future events in the TV show (much like, say, the various Pokémon movies over the years), but with so many of the TV show staff working on the movie and no easy way to have a TV season simultaneous with the movie-based sets, making the movie represent the next chapter of the Ninjago storyline just makes sense.

You unlock him after the first boss battle in the Rocklands. No need to worry!

That... is a bogus argument. Businesses don't make things that suck on purpose. It just doesn't happen. In the case of Lego Dimensions, it's true that licensed franchises seem to have gotten a lot more attention, but that's not because TT Games wants Ninjago or Chima to fail, but rather because those licensed franchises have a much better chance of ensuring more sales by widening the customer base beyond just "Lego fans". I can't tell you how many stories I've read about people who have gotten Lego Dimensions specifically because it includes Ghostbusters, or Portal, or Doctor Who, whereas I'd reckon that a large portion of Ninjago and Chima fans are also fans of other Lego themes and might have gotten Lego Dimensions even if those two themes hadn't been included. As for console exclusives, I expect that TT Games does them not because they want them to fail (which would be beyond stupid) but because the sales of the licensed games are much more reliable (again, because they appeal to both Lego fans AND fans of the license even when those groups don't overlap). Surefire hits like the licensed games get bigger budgets and more support from retailers and publishers by default, while with riskier games like Lego City Undercover focusing on one specific system both helps them to make the most of their budget (by only having to develop for one system as opposed to five or more), and ensures greater support from the publisher in question (usually Nintendo). On that note, it's also worth pointing out that Nintendo systems (especially handhelds) have a userbase that overlaps much more with Lego's target audience of kids, which makes a big difference when TT Games can't rely on adult Star Wars fans or Indiana Jones fans or Jurassic Park fans to make up the difference. TL;DR: TT Games doesn't want ANY of their games to "fail". But as with Lego in general, some themes are more successful than others, and the budget for those themes is usually adjusted based on that demand. Console exclusivity deals and less expensive handheld games are a matter of TT Games trying to do the very best with the budget and time they've been allotted for the games in question.

Yeah. That's why that variant is being phased out, and the one on the right is replacing it. But it's not a mismold—in fact, the one on the left is currently the most up-to-date version that's available on LDD, where it matches your picture almost exactly (I wish they'd replace it with the one on the right, which has the same Design ID but is more current).

What on earth are you talking about, regarding "safer" designs? I assume by "fake vents" you mean ones like the one on the upper left of his jaw, that don't actually have a cavity running through them, but there's nothing "unsafe" about that. It achieves the look they were going for to the best of their ability, while still being able to be molded efficiently. Lego may strive for the best but they can't get everything perfect—the whole reason for the ingenious "lens" solution for the eyepiece on that same mask was the inability to have the eyepiece either filled or totally hollow, a problem that was otherwise unfixable in the late development period after the issue became known. Good design often means making sacrifices.

I dunno, to me the name reminds me of things like "Imperial Turbolaser"—not necessarily indicative of something all that powerful or unique.

This isn't a major issue, but for some reason a bunch of the Technic panels had their default orientation changed to weird angles. 11946, 64391, 64393, 64680, 64682, 87080, and 87086 all have this problem. When attaching 22392 to 24078, a gap is left between the parts, despite no such gap existing in real life. The 3.2 mm bar on 24078 should be able to extend all the way into the hole on 22392, but it doesn't. A minifigure with beard 93223 can't wear hairpiece 18835 on LDD, despite that hairpiece having only been used with that beard on figures in real life.

At the very least, I think there are a lot of factors that make a non-minifig-scale model likely to be better. For character-based licensed projects, minifig-scale models are often limited by the inability to create new molds, which can severely impact the recognizability of a character. It's also a tricky sort of scale when it comes to certain subject matter—it makes it hard to get adequate detail on something that's too small, and can make subject matter that's too large totally unfeasible for a retail set. In general, breaking free of the constraints of minifigure scale allows you to select the optimal scale for the subject in question. And if we ever get an Ideas set based on an existing license, I think one that's NOT minifigure scale would have a much better chance than one that IS, since it's much less likely to overlap with Lego's existing plans for the theme (the main exception might be Star Wars, which already features models at a wide variety of different scales on a regular basis). That said, if you can make a model in minifigure scale and do it really well, I think it'd probably have an edge over a similar model that's a different scale in almost every case. Minifigures are a huge selling point for Lego, so a model that includes minifigures is almost certainly going to have a competitive edge over one that doesn't, particularly in the case of licensed themes that are popular in no small part due to their characters. I doubt the Ecto-1 or Delorean Time Machine sets would have sold nearly as well if they had been models of the cars without the iconic characters from their respective brands, even if a lack of minifigures allowed for a larger scale with more accuracy to the actual film props.

I dunno. It's just an efficient way to pace myself so that I don't build all the sets I bought within the first week. I have plenty of sets from other themes to tide me over in the meantime. Also, I don't actually check ratings or anything, and I doubt me watching the show when it airs even makes that much of a difference (especially not for a show that's as successful as Ninjago), but it's the thought that counts.

So they didn't actually make the games out of Lego? Darn. I had thought that'd be what they'd do when this pack was initially announced. That definitely makes me less interested in getting it...