Lyichir

I don't know if I'd say that experienced designers make better modulars. I think it might sometimes be almost the opposite—that people are inherently more critical toward modulars when they're coming from a designer they haven't heard of, and are less willing to view differences between those new designs and the ones they're used to as anything but bad. Give people something easy to blame their initial reactions on, and it becomes easier for them to reinforce those reactions instead of approaching with a more open mind. Of course, designers don't get experienced except by getting to design sets in the first place—listening to fans it'd be easy to forget that the Café Corner was one of Jamie Berard's first set designs, and that he wouldn't have gotten to work on the later, better modulars of his career if he had not started there. And especially for a series as high-profile as the Modular Buildings series, newer designers don't get to be tasked with one unless their ideas are selected and approved by those more experienced senior designers. But of course, the backseat designers in the fan community like to think they know best, and cry out repeatedly for their favorite designers to do all the work themselves instead of trusting and fostering newer talent and letting their unique ideas and perspectives leave a mark on the series. None of these discussions are new. Ever since Jamie Berard stopped designing every single modular himself fans have been whining and complaining that the series is on the decline (heck, even before that, people were complaining about the Fire Brigade being the worst modular ever). But usually those discussions soften once people start to get the new set in hand and whiners who made a big stink about the set before even having it in hand become outnumbered by people who did get it and decided it's pretty cool, actually.

Other LAN sites like New Elementary, Brothers Brick, as well as several YouTubers have reviewed the set, so it's probably not a case where an embargo hasn't been reached. It's probably just a matter of time and scheduling. Not every site always has time to drop everything already in progress to prioritize an upcoming set, even a highly anticipated one like this.

As a fan of how the Mario theme has handled things I feel the opposite. I think "minifig-scale" would largely be a suboptimal approach to Pokémon, allowing for less detail and articulation for most Pokémon (excepting those big enough that they could be brick-built anyway). Even if a Pokémon theme does end up needing specialized molds for certain features those are still likely to be more versatile and useful for MOCing than something like a solid single-piece Pikachu would have been. This approach would also make it easier to build additional Pokémon or customize the ones that come in sets, instead of being constantly reliant on an inherently limited range of molded figures to add to your collection. Things like locations and human characters might sometimes work better with minifigures, but I don't know if that would be worth it if the buildability/playability of the Pokémon themselves suffer for it. Ultimately they're more of a draw and more of the focus of the franchise than locations or human trainers are.

1. Not sure whether there will be a Season 4... hopefully there will be but it's not uncommon for themes on the way out to get less media and promotion. 2. From what we've heard, yes. 3. I'm not quite sure what you mean by this... I think the Dreamzzz theme's variety and adaptability to different subject matter is a feature, not a bug. Being able to represent the childlike interests of different characters means the theme isn't limited to any sense of realism or any one aesthetic/style. 4. Agree to disagree, I love colorful transparent parts and I think the ones in this new wave are really used well in various color schemes. The trans pink on the villains is especially cool to me, adding vibrancy and energy to their otherwise dark color schemes. 5. This is gonna be a matter of individual taste but at least it seems like there aren't any issues where stickers are used in one build but not others (an issue with the Z-Blob mech last year). 6. Agreed, though I'm disappointed by the issue with the crystal egg piece described in the New Elementary review. That seemed like a really cool part but not being able to attach them back to back and connect them by the studs on top is a bummer.

Something that occurred to me recently when buying gifts for family is that, while Lego has gotten a little more into sets for adults, there's very little to speak of in their catalog that appeals broadly to teens in their edgy/angsty phases. There's a little bit in licensed fare (Wednesday's goth-adjacent aesthetic, Stranger Things' coming-of-age/horror blend), but less when you get into unlicensed stuff (which mostly either trends colorful and cartoony for kids or prestigious and stately for adults). I ended up getting my young cousin the Wednesday Black Dahlia set, but I can't help but wonder if there's a market for an original theme for that age—something slightly spooky, edgy, or countercultural, but one that doesn't have to lean on fandom for existing pop culture. I guess pseudo-horror themes like Monster Fighters and Hidden Side sort of filled that niche before they went away, and a theme in that vein could do so again in the future, but there's not much in the current catalog of themes that fits the bill.

I guess it's no more or less likely than any other possible outcome, I was talking about the specific possibility of a better falcon appearing in Ninjago at some point so I don't really know why the broad possibility of it appearing in a CMF series in the future is relevant.

I don't think that's particularly likely, there's rumors of a minifigure of Lloyd in that series but the falcon from Ninjago is more closely associated with Zane and his father.

Just watched an interview with the designer behind the Ninjago Old Town set and he made clear that if he could have used the newer falcon mold he would have—the character he's with was decided late in the set design process and he couldn't arrange to put the newer falcon mold back into production in time to lock in the final design of the set. With that context I think it's a pretty fine compromise and hopefully if the falcon appears in a future Ninjago set they can use the proper mold.

Story-wise if you interpret it as being crafted from Izzie's Mr. Sharkyjaw plush (which is yellow-orangeish before being transformed into the Nightmare Shark Ship in season one) the colors also work as a more colorful, "uncorrupted" version of the character.

I mean, it is Bionicle's 25th anniversary this summer (which come to think of it, the fig might be a way of commemorating) but I doubt the whole series will be that. That said, if the fig design is good, it'd be nice if they followed it up with other Bionicle characters in the future (probably through assorted themes instead of overwhelming CMFs with them). After years of homages to '80s sets (which I've appreciated, don't get me wrong), it feels cool for more of the themes from my childhood to get a spotlight.

Actually, the lighter pink in it is a new color for next year—Warm Pink (don't know if it has a Bricklink name yet). You can also see it in the Japanese Cherry Blossom Landscape set, where it's sort of like a lighter shade of Vibrant Coral. Warm Pink is also used for the masonry bricks at the base of Liann's House, and for the big semicircles in the new Friends Club House set. There's also another new Bluish Violet color that was first spotted in the Botanicals Daisies set as sprigs of lavender (alongside the two existing lavender colors), and which is also used prominently in Liann's House for the door and roof tiles.

Hm... Tahu minifigure could be neat. It's always been a little sad that among the Bionicle minifigures (which were all varying levels of awkward), the original six Toa never got minifig-scale versions. Of course, my preference would've been for figs sort of like the Hero Factory Invasion From Below figs (which looked great and had good articulation and customizability while being more robotic looking than standard minifigures), and I don't expect that from a CMF (which as a rule tend to stick to the classic head-body-legs customization). But hopefully we'll still get a good-looking mask, weapon, and maybe a torso armor piece for some added texture.

I don't know if there's a single prescribed "story" to the set (instead just the elements to tell one with the various elements involved). The helicopter pilot can be trying to steal the car, the safe, or both, and free the inmate. But yeah, the female criminal in the helicopter seems to be the same one from the other set. Personally, rather than "factions" I interpreted it as various criminals working together to pull off the heist. Maybe even the imprisoned one on the train car tracking the train's movements from the inside. With the train's location known (and with it, the safe and impounded car that could be evidence from a previous case), the crooks make their move, using the helicopter to bust their comrade out, drop down a getway driver to escort him away in the impounded car, and airlift the safe away. By splitting up (with one group escaping by land and one by air) they hope to have a better chance of making a clean getaway!

Saw a blurry leaked pic of the Old Town... looks decent and hard to pick out many details but for me personally I'm a little worried about the size. Seems to be like a large ring arrangement (sort of reminiscent of sets like Sentai Fortress or Fort Legoredo), which is a perfectly fine layout except I'm not sure it'll fit on many of my usual shelves (unlike with a more horizontal arrangement like the Ninjago City sets). May have to figure out somewhere new to display it.

By the way, someone mentioned the Black Falcon insignia on Mr. Oz's new torso in the Dreamzzz sets, but I thought I'd mention that Zoey and Izzie's new torso/leg prints could also work well in a fantasy setting (both being armored designs lacking modern features like zippers). There's also an armor pauldron piece in trans colors (trans orange, opalescent clear, trans bright green, and trans light blue) a new large fantasy sword mold in various colors (opalescent clear with a gold hilt, trans bright green with a gold hilt, trans light blue with a silver hilt, and trans pink with a black hilt), fantasy energy creatures in trans colors (trans bright green, opalescent clear, trans orange, and trans light blue) and crystal halves that can contain them in trans light blue and trans pink. Obviously most of this is of no use for actual historic builders, but for fantasy fans a lot of this could be useful. This wave is giving me some major Elves vibes which as a huge fan of that theme, is absolutely not a bad thing!

Sorry, I said treasure "creatures" and crystal eggs. That's what the set descriptions call the new translucent animals and the crystals that they emerge from in all of the different sets.

Been looking over these sets more finely. One of my (extremely minor) issues with Dreamzzz is that because most of the set pictures are focused on showing off the alternate builds, there's usually fewer pictures focused on showing off play features, interiors and whatnot, so until we get reviews there's always the potential for stuff we aren't seeing. I'm trying to compile some of my more in-depth thoughts here, forgive me for rambling a little. One thing I noticed about the shark tank is that there's a bar connection at the base of the tail behind the dark blue "hull"—the same connection type used for modular attachments in a lot this year's sets. Since those connections don't seem to be used in either build, I'm curious if the middle section is actually removable—if so, those two unused connections could be used to reposition the two fins to make a build that's just the shark itself without all the sci-fi adornments. The top fin would also have to be moved forward or back but there looks like there's a space for it to attach on the top of the head or tail as well. While I'm happy that we're getting most of the main cast in new outfits, it is a little bit of a shame that some of the supporting cast didn't make it (such as Astrid, Albert, and Mrs. Castillo/Lumia). The latter echoes how disappointing it was that she didn't get a release this year after the game island tower set was cancelled, and I similarly doubt there are any additional sets for this final wave waiting in the wings to include the final couple characters—but if there were, I'd certainly be pleasantly surprised. Maybe they'll surprise me and do BAM figures again, though that probably wouldn't help with most of these characters since Mrs. Castillo and Albert don't fit the head-body-legs assembly of typical figs and I don't think they typically have large multi-part accessories like wheelchairs in the BAM stations. Several aspects of these sets feel like a throwback to earlier sets. Cooper's two dino vehicles he can build remind me of the C-Rex, the crocodile submarine sort of calls back to Logan's beastcrafted version of Cooper's sports car from year one, and of course the shark tank (possibly an uncorrupted Mr. Sharkyjaw?) calls back to the Nightmare Shark Ship. If this weren't the final wave, these sorts of retreads would feel a little unoriginal, but with the context that this is probably the "grand finale" I find it kind of fitting that they're bringing things full circle like this. A bit of a shame that Bunchu and Z-Blob don't really get builds of their own this time (Z-Blob appears but doesn't actually get a build this time). Zoey (who I feel the theme often struggled to find a consistent concept/tone for in terms of builds) doesn't really get anything either, but the eagle alt build of the crocodile submarine might be intended to sort of give some of the winged theming of Zian or the Time Owl to the set she comes in. The Scorpion Digger is the only build fully themed around the bad guys (seemingly an upgraded Nightmare King and Arika, who could either be an underling or scheming chessmaster manipulating the Nightmare King). But it definitely impresses in both the scorpion and wasp builds. Parts-wise, I really like the treasure creatures and crystal eggs. They definitely give me Elves vibes, which is the opposite of a bad thing! The crystal halves are also used to good effect in several of the builds.The new swords shared by the heroes and the Nightmare Emperor are cool (I like the variety of colors, which are more varied than the "hourglass hilts" used for several of the weapons these past two years which only came in two colors). The new claw/flame/wing piece used for several of the models is suitable for varied purposes and comes in a lot of colors, like a lot of the "energy effect" pieces this theme has offered. I'm not sure how many of the sets I'll get. The most "skippable" sets, figure-wise, are the Fox Guardian Mech and either the Scorpion Digger and Dino Jet (either has the orange treasure creature and a variant of Cooper with either a hood or a hat/hair). But the thing is... I really like all these sets! They're all really cool builds, and even the sets without unique figs have cool recolors of some of the new parts. So I might just end up getting all of them, which would be the first time I collected all the Dreamzzz sets in a year. Again, it's rare for me to do that with any theme with Elves being the main exception, which is a testament to how much I like this wave!

That's just a "lightsaber blade" piece inserted through the grip (much like you can do with some other circular or ovoid shield castle shield pieces, to mount them on poles or spears or whatnot).

Not a new element, it originated back in 2011 in the Star Wars theme (printed, in transparent purple). Has appeared in many other themes since then (Chima, Ultra Agents, Dimensions, as well as the shield of Orion from the space CMFs), but it wasn't until this year that it appeared in grey (in the Enterprise set).

Relatively new it seems! Looking at his Instagram, he's worked on the Retro Radio, French Café, Smeagol and Deagol GWP, and Leonardo DaVinci's Flying Machine.

Looks lovely. I imagine it's not easy to come up with a layout as unique as this after almost 15 years of modulars. EDIT: New Elementary has their review up with a good look at the parts (including the return of sand green 1x8 bricks and 1x2 bricks with slot), as well as a good look at those lovely lovely angles.

Very cute GWP, can't wait for the full modular reveal (hopefully later this morning?).

I was able to get a second Blacktron Renegade on sale and just finished building the alternate model. Despite how divisive it seems to have been, I really enjoyed that set. Ought to give MOCing with some of those leftover parts (and others from my collection)—it'd be nice to make a base for them, especially if I get the Blacktron fig from that recent book to act as a commander.

The purple tricorne will nicely complement the purple bicorne from the Botanicals sets.

More sets have been revealed, Brick Fanatics has the most comprehensive coverage I've seen so far: www.brickfanatics.com/lego-friends-back-with-bang-in-january-2026/ That Garden Restaurant is GORGEOUS! EDIT: brickmerge.de is starting to catch up with pics including plenty of alt pics of the sets, including better looks at the interior of the garden restaurant and clubhouse.