Lyichir

A part of me would love an Australian wildlife subtheme—we finally have koalas but there's never been a Lego kangaroo before, and they'd be too big to fit into a CMF or something. Of course American or African wildlife would also be plenty welcome.

Oh wow, that's nice attention to detail!

Is there a topic for 2025 Friends sets yet? Just saw a lifestyle video of the camper van, featuring a working toilet similar to the one in Ninjago City Markets!

Personally I adored the color scheme of the Jazz Club. I love bold triadic color schemes, and the Jazz Club pulled it off well in my opinion.

Each of these cars is a complete playable unit on its own, whereas part of the issue with the old My Own Train sets was that unless they were being bought by a train fan who already had their own collection, buyers would have to buy multiple different sets before they had a full train. It's not really a symmetrical comparison. I also feel like "they hate train fans" is a pretty big simplification for the more important factor of "train fans are not necessarily the biggest or trendiest audience". There's no animus necessary to explain it—train fans tend to be fewer and often older whereas F1, like it or not, is a pretty hot commodity right now across various age ranges.

It's nice to see a recolor of baby Riyu used as another baby dragon. When that part first came out I was hoping it would see further use for different sorts of dragons, sort of like the wide variety of baby dragons in the 2016 Elves sets.

Just saw images of the Panda Family set—another one where all three models are gorgeous (the alt builds are an Orca Family and an Emperor Penguin Family, both of which make good use of the black and white parts).

The Horizon set looks good. I think a similarly sized set would work well for a Breath of the Wild follow-up set (like a Guardian vs. Link on horseback).

I missed this one when it was posted months ago but I love it—feels almost like if some of the mobile base sets from more modern themes like Chima or Agents got transported back in time to Spyrius! I like the Spyrius theme's emphasis on saucers and mechs but could easily see a truck like this doing ground-based logistical support for them.

Yeah, I think that if you're going with the "classic pirates" look that features bright red striped shirts and bandanas, a bright red wool hat certainly isn't too much of a stretch.

The one on the right looks cleaner but the one on the left looks better for posability/play.

https://intothespiderverse.fandom.com/wiki/Spider-Cat I could definitely see them using the new fluffy cat mold from CMF 27 for this, if it allows for enough decoration. TBH while I'm not always the biggest fan of licensed CMFs, I do LOVE the Spider-Verse movies, and there's definitely plenty of characters to draw from in them (with very distinct visual designs even compared to the comics). If they offer a good mix of heroes, villains, and other characters I think there shouldn't be any issue with a lack of variety.

I don't really think the D&D dragon would be changed in response to a non-licensed set coming out a year later. If anything it'd be the other way around—the D&D dragon is subject to licensor approval so specific changes like that could be requested, whereas a dragon in a theme like Creator could be any color the designers want (though green is a nice classic color for dragons which probably factored into the decision).

I don't think there's a mechanism for the cars—they have tan pin connections, which usually signifies frictionless pins. The ramp set seems designed to let good old gravity do the work of propelling them. Dark bley is a nice useful recolor for the Stuntz ramp piece, and should make those easier to integrate with other road plates.

Not only does the dragon look awesome but so do its two alt builds (a sea serpent and phoenix)! I expect that set may be the work of designer Aaron Newman, who designed this year's amazing giraffe and fox sets and has a history of building dragons as an AFOL!

It looks like some of the new cars use a new 4x6 wedge with sunroof, sort of like the existing 4x6x2/3 wedge slope used for car and truck roofs sometimes. That'll be a cool part, since there hasn't been a part like that with a built-in sunroof since the old Town days.

It looks great! It looks like both of the Futuron-styled torsos are different than the BAM ones since they're color coded to each "faction" (instead of the reddish orange used for all factions). So the two astronauts outside the ship have Flame Yellowish Orange and Bright Green, and it looks like the pilot has Dark Azure to complete the "trio". I do love the consistency with the BAM version, which should allow them to be used together in neat ways—though the BAM fig lacks a matching right arm like these, so maybe I should go ahead with my idea to get some new reddish orange arms from figs like this summer's construction workers to swap out. Love the design of the ship itself, which feels cool and unique with that cylindrical hub module in the back. It's not a huge ship, but still bigger than the ones from this year, and will complement those well.

There's no way the hood is IP-locked, since it's been used in many non-Star Wars and even non-Disney themes (Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Monkie Kid, Ninjago, Dungeons & Dragons, Dune).

In the old Mania Magazines IIRC they were sometimes called "Rocky" but I think generally it was just called a rock monster.

No, those are part of the the rubber wire/hose piece that's stretched around the edge (in Technic they've been used as barrier wires in the Car Transporter from 2019.

As a big fan of dragons in Ninjago, they've gotten really good in terms of sturdiness and playability. The bigger ones in particular tend to have their limbs and bodies locked together quite well so that they can be posed and moved without coming apart, and recently introduced joints that combine the smaller click hinges from the Knights Kingdom II figures with the big ones from AT-AT sets have allowed for stronger joints at the shoulder/hip with a decent range of movement. The Source Dragon of Motion that came out this year is the biggest and very possibly the best yet, very sturdy and stable and well-sculpted without sacrificing articulation. Smaller dragons in the theme still tend to rely largely on Bionicle and Mixels-style ball joints for articulation, which generally work well at those scales even if they can sometimes result in a blockier look in places. Many current dragons in the theme, big and small alike, have molded heads with printed detail—most of which have opening jaws, and use similar part types so that you can mix and match different upper and lower jaw pieces to create a distinct look for each (many bigger dragon sets use additional parts to build up the head behind the upper and lower jaws and add features like horns). Stickers on Ninjago dragons are rarely an issue—complex areas like the eyes tend to be printed, so stickers end up mostly attached to basic sorts of slopes or tiles where they are easy to apply and where they aren't likely to shift during play. And since stickers on Ninjago dragons mostly tend to add minor detail like scale patterns or decorative emblems to sets that already tend to have a fair share of brick-built detail for color blocking and texture, if you choose to do without them it generally won't detract too much from the overall look. Smaller dragons often use molded wings but bigger ones tend to use a plastic film membrane stretched across a bony Technic frame, which still tends to be sturdy and sometimes even allows the wings to be "folded" smaller sort of like the rubbery wings used for Smaug in the Hobbit sets. And yeah, the fact that brick-built dragons can basically adapt to any scale or body plan is part of the appeal—it ensures that a good portion of your enjoyment comes from building the dragon itself, rather than the dragon feeling like a glorified action figure tacked on to a build; and that getting multiple dragon sets rarely feels repetitive or stale compared to getting a bunch of molded animals that tend to stay roughly the same shape and size for years on end.

It looks quite nice—I'm impressed with how detailed it is, even including interiors. I don't think it's particularly realistic to ever expect an "authentic" sailing ship in minifigure scale, especially one based on a specific real-world ship. The fact of the matter is that real-world ships tend to be extremely big, to the point that making them truly minifigure scale puts them well out of the range of affordability (it's no surprise that even this small-scale Endurance is several hundred dollars). Minifig-scale "playset" ships will likely remain the domain of either original themes like Pirates or IPs like Pirates of the Caribbean, where there's less demand for keeping the floor plan and scale authentic to the real thing.

I don't think they could—Smaug is so specifically based on the design he had in the movie that all his parts are likely IP-locked to the LotR/Hobbit theme.

To be honest while I liked the classic dragon I see no reason to bring it back, especially now that they've gotten so good with brick-built dragons and now that the expected standard of detail for the majority of molded Lego animals tends to look different (more rounded, with printed features). And it's not like the classic dragon is rare or expensive on the aftermarket—if you want a classic dragon it's quite easy to get one without needing it to come in a modern set.

You're way off track with that, I think. For every one adult who invests in a complete set of minifigures, there are probably dozens of kids buying minifigures a couple at a time. Adults make up more of the Lego buying audience than they once did, but the majority of Lego purchases still go to kids—ESPECIALLY when it comes to cheap "pocket money" sets like CMFs.