Lyichir

Got another pair of Series 1 today at Target while I was getting my vaccine booster. Got Werewolf Drummer and Samurapper (the latter being my first duplicate, which I might send to my sister). I might try to check WalMart sometime soon to see if I can find any Series 2 before they disappear. I don't feel any need to collect them all but I do like the figs and Beatbits and would like to pick up a couple if I have the chance. Will probably pick up some of the stages at some point in the future too, especially if they go on sale like the first wave beatboxes did.

This was a rather absurd idea back in the day and is arguably moreso now, with the pandemic taking a major toll on many of Disney's businesses (movies, parks, etc.) while Lego comparatively flourishes and becomes an increasingly dominant force in the toy industry. Disney buying Lego outright would also poison their relationship with Hasbro (one of Disney's major toy industry partners for non-building toys) and potentially poison Lego's relationship to non-Disney franchise owners (such as WB's Harry Potter and Universal's Jurassic World among many other more minor licensed themes). It would be a lose-lose scenario for both companies even in the fantasy scenario where Lego was interested in selling and Disney in buying. The two companies benefit far more from their current relationship than they would under one roof.

You seem to be mistaking the ability to bring a case with the reasonable likelihood of the case being successful. Photos that have been retouched to put their subjects in the best possible light is standard practice in the toy industry. To win a false advertising case about that you'd have to prove that that retouching was actively misrepresenting an explicit or implicit claim about the product and that that misrepresentation would make or break the purchasing decision for a reasonable consumer. Those would be high standards to prove in court if your strongest claim was "the printing looks different in this photo" or "the yellow here looks different". There's obviously a debate to be had about what types of product images are best for a product like Lego. On one end of the scale you would have a very basic, sterile product image on a plain white backdrop, and on the polar opposite of the scale you'd have something like Hidden Side where the depiction of the product is highly artistic. In between, there's a lot of room for different physical or digital ways of enhancing an image, such as the dramatic lighting and backgrounds or photoshopped motion blur or energy effects. We can have those debates and critique photo choices without getting into absurd flights of fancy about suing Lego in court over it.

Sorry, what? The idea of suing them because some of the colors in their web photos are a little off is completely daft. There's no court of law in the world that would reasonably find that a minor error like that was a deliberate or reckless attempt to deceive customers. I swear, some people let their minor grievances with Lego go completely to their heads.

Since I've made a lot of progress on it, I figured I might share the spreadsheet I've made of the stickers from this theme with translations and notes about Easter eggs: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qseJOBXDEBFmfWR_I3h7DlP8bbGX-jt9Ij1JvrGaT-M/edit?usp=sharing Rebrickable's reviews of 80032 and 80036 helped a lot for identifying the text from the new sets, since they included high quality scans of the sticker sheets. I am anxiously awaiting review copies of 80035 to be sent out so that I can identify details and easter eggs from that set (notably, there are at least two transparent viewscreens that don't appear in any of the official pictures, which may contain other text or Easter eggs). If you have any contributions you could help with, please let me know! I think I've identified most of the text from earlier sets but there are several snippets of text (often in the form of dates or initialisms) that are probably Easter eggs which I haven't yet deduced the specific significance of.

Hm... maybe it's a case of images with print colors getting mixed up with ones with web colors? I know that's occasionally been an issue with images in press kits in the past, though I don't remember the shop page having those issues before.

I think if they do minifigures for the movie that are not meant to interact with the main gameplay feature of the expansions, it'd make more sense to simply do a CMF series than to go for a sort of "hybrid" approach like you suggest. CMFs can more easily budget specialized molds due to their high production volume, and selling them as standalone would more easily prevent confusion for buyers who might not realize that the play features of the expansion packs are not designed for the included figures.

It occurs to me that there's a more practical reason why a naughty list could potentially result in the set getting pulled, and it's not Lego being "soft"... it's that the list would have a very different impact if YOUR name happens to be on it. Imagine being a kid, excitedly building the set, only to see "Bob" or "Carlos" or "Sophie" or whatever your name is on Santa's naughty list! Suddenly instead of a charming holiday scene, a small demographic of impressionable kids with unlucky names might see it as a grim omen—definitely NOT the message Lego wants to send to any of their customers!

The stripes on 42140 look like they might be that color. I'm not sure it'll ever work as the dominant color of a Technic vehicle but it seems like it makes a good accent.

Personally I'm quite fond of the idea of Technic featuring a few more creative types of vehicle toys like this rather than just realistic ones. An RC vehicle like this in particular is something that couldn't really be pulled off in any other theme. Could be cool to get something like a monowheel in the future—the sort of thing that's impractical for real-world vehicles but could make a very fun toy.

Hm, this is interesting. Assuming it's not a rendering quirk or error making another current color look different, it feels similar to the older Brown (TLG)/Dark Nougat (BL) that was used for brown Bionicle sets from 2004 to 2005. Additional skin tones certainly don't hurt—I can think of a lot of scenarios where neither Reddish Brown or Medium Nougat would really be accurate. One who comes to mind is Kelly Kapoor (portrayed by Mindy Kaling) in The Office, who may appear in the upcoming Ideas set. And of course it could be useful for other applications as well, particularly if it does turn out to be an older color coming back rather than a brand-new one.

Possibly, or like how Prime Empire used the Legacy Jungle Raider and Thunder Raider as opposing racers in the Speedway Five Billion. I do like the training ground. Very heavy on play features yet also seems like it will look good connected to the Dojo Temple.

I know there hasn't been a TON of activity in this topic this year, but should somebody make a Dots 2022 thread? StoneWars has some pics of the March releases, which include some neat customizable message board sets.

Yeah, IIRC the newer version has stud notches so that it can be placed more evenly on fewer studs (sort of like newer jumper plates and the like).

I assume by online you just mean on the computer? I like building physically, but a lot of the time building digitally can be more practical. With digital building I can use a wide variety of parts (ones I have and ones I don't) without having to get out a bunch of my physical parts, which is often easier said than done (since for years now my family's physical collection has been in a perpetual state of being half-sorted, and for various reasons I don't see myself being able to resolve that in the immediate future). Also, it allows me to come up with mods or alternate builds for my sets BEFORE I go through the trouble of disassembling those sets (very useful to make sure I have a plan in place that's worth disassembling those sets before I've done so). And during times of the year like now when new set releases are on the horizon, it allows me to try to "reverse-engineer" upcoming sets to get a better feel for how they're constructed, including techniques I might not have been familiar with. Now, does that mean digital building is necessarily ideal? Probably not. The fact that digital building requires no sort of cleanup is both a blessing and a curse, since it makes it way easier to get to a point where you have tons of half-finished "works in progress" but no actual completed builds to show off. Also, even I'll admit that digital building makes it harder to get flashes of inspiration for how parts can be used together than when you're manipulating the parts physically in your hand (especially since having the parts sorted into neat categories, again, is a blessing and a curse—you're less likely to come up with novel combinations of very different types of parts than you would be if you had them both physically in front of you). But it's definitely a great option to have, especially when you don't have full, unrestrained access to physical parts to build with.

Oh, the training grounds look lovely—and yes, it does look like they (or at the very least, parts of them) can attach to the dojo temple. Neat! The spinners also look good, but yeah, it's a shame there aren't comparable costumes/spinners for Zane, Cole, and Nya. Maybe we might get something like that in the summer, or next year, but I wouldn't hold my breath. It seems like the days of getting a full set of six small "gimmick" sets of that sort are long behind us.

This is a really lovely model with some very nice parts usage for the roof. I like the half-timber details and the interior layout as well. Unfortunately, one thing that may hold it back on Lego Ideas is that one of the key parts in its design, the old sports quarter-pipes, are long out of production. If it got to the review stage, Lego would have to determine whether there are any current or upcoming parts that could effectively replace that element of the design without alienating the supporters. More likely than not, it would end up being rejected in favor of a simpler to execute project.

Neat! I love the chunky shapes and how they look in poses, as well as the face (will have to keep that eye technique in mind in the future)!

Lego doesn't make a ton of yellow torsos, especially not coats... since outside of licensed themes that's the typical minifigure skin tone. You might want to take a gander through the torsos available in Flame Yellowish Orange/Bright Light Orange to see if anything pops out to you as being suitable? There have been a few torsos in that color in themes like Ninjago and Monkie Kid that could potentially be suitable for historic figs.

I feel like the challenge of occasional zoo sets like that is context. Without the broader context of a larger zoo, individual animal enclosures would seem out of place. And Lego cycles products much quicker than a company like Playmobil, so only offering one or two sets each year would run into the issue where only maybe three or four of those at best would end up available at the same time, as the older ones retire to make room for newer sets. I think a more practical strategy, if Lego did decide a zoo would be a good brand fit, would be a single large standalone zoo set ($100–150ish), with maybe two or three large animals (elephant, lion, giraffe etc.) and a handful of smaller animals to round it out. The new "My City" line (with sets such as this year's school and such) could potentially be a good place for that even if not part of a larger subtheme. And if a set like that proved successful, the concept could be recycled every couple of years, or perhaps even expanded to a subtheme. Now, I don't know if a strategy like that would result in what a lot of folks are hoping for from a zoo subtheme (a large number of new animal releases at once). An individual zoo set that isn't tied to a larger subtheme would likely not have the budget for a bunch of new animal molds on its own—maybe one new animal mold at most and perhaps a few recolors of existing animals. But I think it could work to "test the waters" and potentially pave the way for a subtheme, as well as expanding the availability of some existing animals if we're lucky.

It's not any more expensive to make parts in neutral greys and blacks. Lego color codes parts not for cost savings, but for ease of building—color coding of common parts like pins and axles means less time spent searching for parts and less chance of accidentally using the wrong part. It's not always a popular decision among AFOLs... but it is one that Lego generally finds reduces customer confusion or dissatisfaction, which both helps to earn repeat customers and reduce customer service complaints where somebody built something wrong and thinks the set is defective or missing parts.

OUTSTANDING review! I'm amazed you were able to put together such a detailed review with high quality photos in just two and a half days! This set looks pretty dang impressive, though it's well outside the price range of what I'd typically want to pay for a theme I don't collect that much. That said, maybe I'll get it as a gift for my younger brother who is more of a Technic fan (and fan of all things fast). I'd definitely be interested in helping him build something like this!

Yes, I'd like to see another set (modular or otherwise) use the working escalator, especially if it finally includes an up/down pair (which with the working ones could be geared together so they move at the same time).

Wow, good eye! That does look like it might be a saddle update, though I'm not 100% sure—I think I only have the oldest variety of saddle myself and Brickset says that there was an update in 2013–2016 sets, so this could be that version maybe. Either way I do think that's a new COLOR of saddle—Dark Brown! That should be a good color especially since it doesn't match any existing horse color exactly (allowing you to, for instance, have a brown horse with a brown saddle without it blending in too much).

I like the idea of adding a rear door under the staircase! That'd probably be a simple enough modification to make, given that it'd mostly just involve replacing some of the bricks from the wall.