Lyichir

The new sets look great! Two of them had leaked earlier but the lucky cat is a nice surprise—very cute and affordable too. I like the new dumpling piece, too.

I wouldn't judge the theme's prospects based on U.S. or European sales. The Chinese market is what this theme was mainly made for, so that's the market that makes or breaks the theme's success—availability elsewhere has always been secondary to that. Anyway, the new sets look great! Erlang's mech is fantastic—the dog motifs are great and while some of the build is similar to Mei's mech from this year, there's ultimately nothing wrong with sticking with working solutions to mech design challenges. The Qilin looks a little boxy for my taste, but less so than the Lion Guardian from year 2 that I still ended up getting.

Yeah, I've seen those leaks too... but an official reveal tends to offer a heck of a lot more info than early leaks do. More pictures, better pictures, etc. If the small number of rumored Monkie Kid sets is just to give the production time to cook (instead of being a sign of the theme ending) that's a huge relief. I don't mind getting a smaller number of sets if enough of those sets are good, especially with other themes like Ninjago and Dreamzzz (along with the occasional City or Friends set) also vying for my attention. It is a shame that Monkie Kid tends to be hard to find secondhand (due in no small part to its reduced distribution outside of Asia). Nice get on a half-price Galactic Explorer, though—I had no idea it was less highly rated by some but I personally loved it, and all the characters in matching spacesuits are super cute! Personally I've gotten most of the sets I've desired each year, though there's a few that didn't make the wishlist that I sorta wish I could find a good deal on (like the Team Van which I would've liked to have mainly for that cute arcade machine). Currently weighing whether or not I'll have the same semi-regret about the Team Power Truck for its cute pinball machine that's straight out of the show's first season. And yeah, Tang has often been one of the less prevalent figs and only one version of him in his original outfit was ever released. :/ Part of that is that unlike the rest of the main cast he didn't show up in sets until the theme's second year, and part of it is probably a factor of him being one of the less exciting/action-oriented characters in the theme (at least until recent seasons when he's begun some spiritual training of his own). I'm not sure if we'll ever get a re-release to be honest, since it's probably more likely that they update his outfit for the show along with the fig to keep things fresh (much like how each year has its own version of MK instead of retreading the classic look).

CIIE (the China International Import Expo), an event where in past years Monkie Kid and Chinese Traditional Festival sets have tended to be revealed, spans from tomorrow until the tenth of the month. Which means we will probably get some official news about some of those sets in the next few days!

I hadn't even thought about the fact that these sets'll probably have alt builds like most of the other Dreamzzz sets, wonder what those'll be like.

Nicely done! I feel like the framing is as impressive as the art itself.

I feel like I'd heard about that before, don't remember from where.

Wow, it's almost like a small printing run for a hyper-exclusive set is easier to slot into the production line than a large number of extra prints for a more widely produced sets (that already had a fair share of unique printed minifigure parts). EDIT: Just saw a comment by a designer on Reddit confirming that sets like this or convention exclusives with small production runs are printed part by part on internal equipment used by the Lego design department for prototyping, which is understandably slower than the production lines at the factories and would be unsuited for manufacturing at a worldwide consumer scale. So it's not even like these parts were chosen to be printed instead of any parts in sets—the production of these employee sets does not impact the production of consumer sets in the first place.

Honestly these look pretty cool to me. The bright and funky color schemes (with a lot of neon yellow) are really unique. Nothing's really jumping out at me as a "must-have" yet, but I could see myself getting some of these, and the 2HY wave tends to be more impressive so I'm expecting to be more impressed then.

The two sets I ordered (Mushroom House and Brick Cross) arrived today! I built the Mushroom House and it's thoroughly delightful. A great build with so many wonderful little details. Can't wait for the Mushroom Village set next year to follow it up!

I mean, M-Tron has BEEN dead as far as being an ongoing theme is concerned. The retirement of magnet parts years ago didn't stop the fan community from continuing to produce great M-Tron MOCs, though, and I doubt the discontinuation of trans neon green will either. Some builders will choose to make do with alternative color schemes, and for those who prefer not to, trans neon green was long-lived enough to provide plenty of options even without new parts being produced in that color.

It's a little hard to tell with the photo quality but I reckon that's just one of the tan wands used in the Notre Dame architecture set. On the other hand, that recolor/print of Mrs. Castillo's body definitely looks new.

Lego Friends may be one of the best current themes... but only because Elves isn't around anymore. I jest a little, but as a fan of fantasy/sci-fi themes over more realistic ones, I'm still sad that the Elves theme didn't continue and make the same leaps and bounds design-wise as Friends has been able to. Every time we get new innovations in the mini-doll space (like the "micro-dolls" used for child characters or the new buildable dolls in themes like Wicked and Wednesday), I feel a little twinge of regret that the Elves theme isn't around to take advantage of it anymore.

It's kind of hard to say Lego copied the competitors with a piece like this because the competitor's piece was itself derivative of parts Lego had introduced earlier—specifically, 1x11 and 1x15 "flip flop beams" were introduced in Lego Technic in 2021, so a clone brand coming out with a 1x7 version in 2022 is less a case of them being truly innovative and more just a case of them beating Lego to the punch with a logical extension to that new "family" of parts. The same applies to things like Lego's recently introduced 1x5 plates—yes, Lego had not produced those for a long time, and yes, clone brands had filled that void, but there's no real argument that Lego introducing one was copying those clone brands rather than just creating something that follows naturally from 1x1, 1x2, 1x3, and 1x4 plates.

The polybag is specifically called "Cooper's Flying Video Game Controller Mini Build" so I reckon there's a good chance that the $20 set also exists as a separate (larger) set. In any case, I like the aesthetic, which is very cool and makes me interested in a gaming-focused wave/story arc.

I'd say relatively comparable—it's leaner/less bulky than Zane's so I'd sooner compare it to Jay's. Definitely much smaller than Cole's, though, and also much smaller than the Monkey King Ultra Mech from the same theme.

Very cool looking! The attachment points for the wings on the small dragon have me thinking they're probably designed to be used on minifigures Chima-style as well.

The newly revealed 2025 polybags include a City Space polybag, which is nothing particularly special (a small mech) but does seem to confirm that next year's City Space sets will maintain the aesthetic/color scheme of this year's sets.

It's not that odd—Dreamzzz, unlike Ninjago, already had a character (Mr. Oz) who is mainly space-themed, so it was an easy bit of synergy to work with.

I watched season 5 a couple months ago back when it was hard to track down "legitimately". Overall I quite enjoyed it. The return to a "mcguffin"-driven plot felt slightly formulaic at times, but it built on the previous seasons nicely and the emotional core was incredibly solid.

Caught up on the Ninjago and Dreamzzz shows while I built a Monkie Kid set today. Things I liked about this year's story: Things I didn't like so much:

Finished catching up on the Dreamzzz and Ninjago shows while I built a Monkie Kid set today. What I liked about the season: What I didn't like/liked less:

I think those banners usually related to sets that were limited to particular retailers (Toys R Us, Target, Walmart, etc.), which on Lego.com and in the Lego catalogs were usually marked as "hard to find". However, I'm sadly not sure of any database that makes it easy to look up that information—Brickset, while usually one of the top databases in terms of searchability, doesn't have an easy way to search for information on exclusivity like that.

It's not even two post offices in one town—the old one is in the main winter village (with most of the "realistic" winter village shops and houses) and this one is at the North Pole, with Santa's Workshop and the Elf Clubhouse.

Not really. Modular GWPs are often only loosely related to the modular they release with, if at all (for example, the food truck that came with this year's museum).