Lyichir

Currently, my favorite themes are Ninjago, Monkie Kid, Dots, and Super Mario. Historically, I've also loved Bionicle, Exo-Force, and Elves a lot, as well as the various Lego Movie themes. I've also been a fan of other "action themes" like Agents, Atlantis, Power Miners, Space Police, and Nexo Knights. In terms of more "standalone" sets I'm also a big fan of the modular buildings, the recent Lunar New Year sets, the botanical sets, and a wide variety of other Ideas and Icons/Creator Expert sets.

Yes, they did introduce more skin tones! So why is getting more use out of some of those a bad thing? Especially considering that having more options for each color makes customization easier. I have no idea why you're so upset over a simple suggestion like that. Having a few more black characters won't hurt anyone, I promise.

Literally nobody is suggesting this. Relax. All somebody did was observe that there's still only a few characters with the darkest skin tones in this new wave. That can easily be improved without "banning all white characters". Catastrophizing about some sort of slippery slope helps no one and seriously misrepresents innocent requests for slightly more equal representation.

,,,I still prefer the dark red. The triadic color scheme just has so much vibrant energy that feels appropriate to the jazz era. With the dark blue it not only feels cold and gloomy, but the contrast between the colors of the club and restaurant feels too stark (with the sunny Mediterranean colors totally clashing with the the dark, muted hues of the club). And that's not even getting into how the tone would clash with other modulars (something I usually see people make a big deal about here). If you had a whole street of nighttime-inspired hues maybe it would work, but on its own that effect would be lost. I also think people saying that the other designers "didn't trust" the original designer's vision are assuming that the set designer didn't ultimately see the validity of their critiques? Which was not the impression I got from the interview at all. As a former art student, I know the value of critique as part of the creative process. If a critique is totally incompatible with your "vision" you can and should push back against it, but if it makes you realize an unintentional oversight of your design, then adjusting it to compensate for that feedback is really the only reasonable course of action.

That wouldn't be a solution, it'd just be avoiding the problem. All the progress that's been made in terms of diverse skin tones has helped more people be able to see people like themselves represented in Lego, even if there's still room to improve.

Presumably the one based on the Target fan vote? Should be interesting to see how it turns out.

Not totally arbitrary, there are two printed butterflies in Cool Yellow and two printed moths in Flame Yellowish Orange.

Yeah, I expect four more bedroom sets might come in the future (either in the second half of this year or possibly next year). If we're really lucky, they might feature alternate "pairings" of the room owners with their friends to help show off different aspects of their characterization (so for instance, while Zac also comes in Nova's room, Zac's room might feature a different character like Leo or Liann to showcase different hobbies or character traits). After all, one fun aspect of having so many "Friends" and their personalities being so well-rounded is that they can relate to each other in different ways.

If that's how you attached the lights I don't think it would work in an actual physical build—the front section of that 2x1 bow with the cut corner doesn't actually have clutch in the front for the 2x2 wedges to be attached by only that part.

Do we know that it's a "traditional" art set with 1x1 tiles making up the majority of the piece count? With sets like The Great Wave or the Rolling Stones wall art, Lego has started moving away from the basic sorts of tile mosaics for a lot of the sets. If the Spider-Man set is something more like one of those sets it could feature some larger pieces to make it up, which could potentially reduce the overall piece count even if it's a substantial size.

In general, even with the old style of road plates Lego generally would introduce a pack of them and keep that in circulation for several years before replacing them. I'd like to see the new road plate system developed further but the lack of a new dedicated pack of them so far this year doesn't really indicate much when last year's pack is still on shelves.

In countries that use 12-hour time, that could also mean 9:08 in the evening, which seems a lot more plausible (especially since a lot of gamers I know tend to be "night owls" rather than early risers).

My Ultra Mech arrived yesterday, and I couldn't resist building it right away! I love it—it's a great improvement on the original Monkey King mech, in its aesthetics and especially in its durability. It no longer relies on large fabric/foil pieces to cover up unfinished areas on the back and hips. Gone are the flimsy single-clip connections for the fingers, flags, and flaps that were so easy to inadvertently knock loose when handling the figure, and the cockpit hatch is similarly much more durable and less prone to lose parts if gripped in the wrong way. The shaping and proportions of the limbs are a lot better, too. The ability to use the jet as a jetpack is the icing on the cake—I modded my original copy of the set to wear the Cloud Jet as a jetpack, but it was in no way equipped to bear that extra weight in the long term. But the new version stands strong even with extra weight added to it. The new figs are great too. I didn't realize from the pictures that the Yellow Tusk Elephant's ears/trunk are slightly rubbery. The Azure Lion's hairpiece is amazing—the thick, wild look of it feels very anime. And Tang looks fantastic, despite the lack of dual-molded legs. As a side note, it occurred to me that it's remarkably easy to complete Tang's staff and Pigsy's rake with extra pieces from other sets (since both the lightsaber hilt and 3M bar commonly come as extras, and I've acquired MANY over the years). Mei's sword and Sandy's crescent staff are a little harder to complete, but only slightly (the gold dragon hilt piece and candlestick necessary to complete them are fairly common but don't come as extras by default). Luckily, I ordered extra gold candlesticks several years back, and have more than enough extra dragon sword hilts from Ninjago sets!

Probably not too long now. From what I can find the trailer for Season 2 was released at the start of February, and the trailer for the third season was January 9th. So assuming that trend continues we'll probably get a trailer in the next month or so!

I feel like "no design effort" is a disservice to the designers who work on the theme. The aesthetic is supposed to be blocky, and I get the sense that a lot of thought goes into how the sets can be built easily as well as rearranged and reconfigured by young builders (moreso than in many other themes where modularity and the ability to combine/rearrange sets is a lower priority). Like with 4+ or even Duplo sets, I don't think that simplicity should be confused for a lack of consideration or work—there's just a different set of priorities being taken with that work, where complexity or strict accuracy to the source material are secondary to the play experience for a young target audience.

Only just took a closer look at that fig (didn't occur to me that it was new, unlike most of the other ninja who are repeats from the Core wave). The color mismatch isn't ideal but I suppose it works when you consider that the belt and headband are cloth while the dark green is more of a scale armor pattern.

Thank you for finally starting a 2023 topic! Long overdue (and I say that as one of the many people who maybe could've started one but kept on putting it off). I ordered the new Monkey King Ultra Mech first thing in the new year, but it's probably not going to arrive until the 9th (one of the major drawbacks of no longer being able to buy the sets in a store when they first become available). I'll probably put in another order for the Team Hideout when a new GWP is available later in the month.

I think you're just looking at the wrong sorts of themes then—themes like Ninjago, Monkie Kid, and Friends all have fantastic playsets. On the licensed side, Lego Super Mario isn't exactly cheap but prioritizes playsets over minifigures to perhaps the most extreme extent of any theme. Speaking of unpopular opinions, one of mine would be that Lego Super Mario doesn't need traditional minifigures and in fact the majority of characters work better in blocky brick-built form than they ever would as minifigures or bespoke molded creatures.

Thanks! It really looks great in a helmet! At my Target there's an area near the front doors where cheap seasonal things tend to be located—I found the CMFs there.

Very nice! Out of curiosity, where is that third face from? I don't recognize it but the little smile is SO funny.

I assume from "electron"/"electronic".

Now that it's actually 2023, shouldn't this topic be pinned?

You might as well ask what the deal is with castles or pirate ships. Space Shuttles may no longer be current but they have their place in history and in popular media. I feel like even now they remain more recognizable and iconic than any of the craft that have supplanted them.

I think Hidden Side too. As well as the new Gaming Tournament Truck set.

I think it's a good call. There was recently a major controversy in California over a measure to legalize the use of lethal force for police robots. A police robot set like that releasing into the midst of that could very easily come across wrong. Better to save the use of drones for things like the firefighting sets, where there's less chance of a major scandal significantly changing the reception for a set like that.