Lyichir

I think it's both that and a response to a surge in demand—preorders give them at least a little more advance notice of what initial demand will be like, allowing them to adjust their production and distribution forecasts accordingly. It's a good idea to some extent, though compared to say, video game preorders, Lego's production pipeline is less nimble than printing off digital media, so even if they adjust their forecasts based on preorders, it takes a while for the results of those sorts of changes to come to fruition.

The idea of a "pre-order bonus" for a Lego set was pretty unprecedented for Lego and probably was only done to build anticipation for the theme as a whole. I'm not really surprised that they aren't taking the same approach for this—after all, those pre-orders sold out incredibly quickly and the theme launched to massive demand, so Lego probably no longer sees the need to try to further incentivize preorders beyond the pent-up demand that already exists. Anyway, considering that you missed out on that one, perhaps it's for the best that the summer/fall wave of these sets will presumably all be getting a full release with adequate supply instead of making one of the sets only available through limited-time promotions like preorders or gifts with purchase.

To be honest, having followed Ninjago since the beginning... we probably never would have gotten the Upply in regular sets even if the MotM wave hadn't been running alongside Legacy. Heck, if anything, if prints and SKUs had been freed up from Legacy we'd be more likely to have just gotten figs like the Munce and Geckle leaders as pseudo-antagonists in sets, or best case scenario, getting figs of Vangelis (undisguised) or the Shintaro Guards as pseudo-allies. Assorted minor allies like the Upply who have no obvious alignment built into their designs and require more context from the show to truly understand don't really slot neatly into the very broad-strokes play scenarios that Ninjago sets typically depict—they're not unlike the numerous characters from early seasons of the show that got passed over in favor of focusing on the major "villain factions" like the Serpentine and Stone Warriors.

I was surprised by that too, given his lack of spikes in some recent appearances (3D Land/World), which are primarily where I recognized him from. However, in other games (Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario Run, New Super Mario Bros. U, and spin-offs like Mario Tennis Aces), he does in fact have a spiked shell. So it turns out it's not really inaccurate, at least not for all of the times he's appeared.

I don't think that's particularly likely. Apart from that series being a more distinct spinoff than the mainline "Super Mario Bros." games (much like the Donkey Kong Country or WarioWare spinoffs), the current "digi-fig" design doesn't really have anywhere on the back where you could conceivably attach a Poltergust! Anyway, I'm excited for the Luigi starter set! Not only is it great to see Luigi, but I'm excited for the pink Yoshi figure—pink Yoshi has been my main in Smash Bros. since Melee!

This looks pretty good from what little I can make out... but the picture you added is exceptionally small and blurry. Do you have links you could share to larger/clearer pictures?

I think you're kind of missing the point a little.

If there's an August wave (I expect there will be, and the lack of leaks is not too unusual for this theme given its exclusivity), the sets will probably have more to do with the remainder of Season 2 than with a third season. Remember, last year's August sets tied in with some of the post-pilot Season 1 episodes, so any fall sets this year will likely still be included in the rest of the current season. Among other things, I hope that the big spider minion from the pilot also appears in the summer sets as a bigfig (though I'm a little less certain that he will given the fact that he goes unnamed in the credits of the Lunar New Year special). I also hope that Tang and Mei with her new helmet appear in some smaller sets, given that both are currently exclusive to the expensive Dronecopter. On that note, I'd really love to know why Mei's helmet wasn't included in the smaller jet set... it seems like it would've been easy to include there and is too minor to feel like it was reserved for being a "selling point" for the Dronecopter, especially since that set is already generous with its features and figs. Maybe a motorcycle-style helmet was just deemed unnecessary for a set with an enclosed cockpit like that? Don't get me wrong, the jet is a fine set, but it would've been nice if it allowed Mei to appear both helmeted and helmetless.

As tiring as the City theme's emphasis on "cops vs. crooks" conflict can sometimes be, it's certainly a great source for grizzled-looking face prints that can work well for all sorts of ne'er-do-wells, even in historical or sci-fi settings!

Oh, how fun! I love the parts usage of the "Nexogons", and how much articulation you built into the legs while keeping them nicely tapered. This has so much personality, even for a creature without a traditional "face" or body language!

Huh. I'm not quite as optimistic for that as you are—GWP sets typically tend to focus on builds over characters, which means animals are often sort of a rare inclusion. But I wouldn't rule it out. It'd be especially nice if the winning entry could work in some of the recent hermit crabs from the CMFs!

The lack of a set like that was one of my big disappointments with the theme, even as a fan of the sci-fi vehicles and stuff. The concept of a tech-infused medieval society was really cool to me and it would have been great to have gotten at least one village set showing how it affected average people in their everyday lives. Things like windmills with solar arrays for their vanes or a "techsmith" who could craft the sorts of energized weapons the knights used would have been awesome, and helped to contextualize the knights and what they were fighting to protect. Actually, now I kind of want to try MOCing a "Nexo" version of the recent Blacksmith Ideas set...

Consensus seems to be that these are fake, but it just gets me thinking that if they actually were to revisit Master of the Mountain, I'd wish it'd be something more like 2016's Airjitzu Battle Grounds that gave us the unreleased "Burst" variants of the three ninja who didn't get them. Yes, it wouldn't really be "canon", but arguably Airjitzu Battle Grounds wasn't either, and I always find it neat when Lego fills in the "gaps" from earlier series of Ninja. 2016 similarly featured a minifigure accessory pack with an even more non-canon "Tournament Zane" fig. And on that note, I'm still sort of hoping that we eventually get a Legacy version of the 2014 Ninjacopter. It feels pretty silly that the Legacy sets based on the 2014 "Rebooted" story arc haven't yet featured Zane, who was arguably the main focus of that arc as a whole, and a "Legacy 2" version of Zane would help make up for that. A Legacy Ninjacopter could also include a new version of Pixal's classic look, which I'm sure would be well-received. I guess this is more like wishlist stuff than discussion of anything actually related to the 2021 sets. But those fake leaks people were discussing here got me thinking about it, so I might as well go ahead and post it anyway.

Bricks and Pieces is a service Lego offers for buying individual parts (outside of their replacement parts service). Regarding the price of the hull I'm not surprised that it costs a lot, and I think one of the main aspects of why it does is its size. Larger parts cost more to mold (both in terms of the material they use and the rate at which they can be produced), more to store (since they take up more space), and, in the case of B&P in particular, more to ship (since they would likely require a dedicated parcel rather than just a bubble mailer like smaller parts).

Still no updates on summer so far. My biggest hopes include: A Peach's Castle set, which would be great for either the start of a level (the castle being attacked to kick off an adventure) or the end of one (visiting the princess for a reward after beating the bad guys). More boss battles, since the Bowser and King Boo boss battles have had some of my favorite gameplay so far. Among others, Gooper Blooper would be great for the boss of a water and/or poison level, and Petey Piranha could be a fun boss as well (especially if beating him involved knocking him over to scan his "belly button" like in Sunshine). But less common bosses like King Bob-omb or Goomboss could work as well. Other Koopalings! Now that we've gotten Larry, the others would be great to get as well. Maybe one or two of them could be the "bad guy" for a big Peach's Castle set, attacking in an airship or something. Snow levels! I don't know if they'd work as a detectable "biome" like the Soda Jungle, since the dominant color (white) is used for other things already, but it'd make for neat scenery either way. One idea I had is a Snow Pokey set where you can knock it down by rolling a big snowball down a hill, instead of using a hammer like in the Desert Pokey set.

If the regular katana fits as people say above, then I would expect these two blade pieces (from the Ninjago weapon multi-pack used in various sets in recent years) to work as well. Possibly more effectively than the standard katana, given its length. Don't necessarily take my word for it, though—I sadly don't have any of the scabbard/hilt piece to test with, so can't really guarantee your results.

Well, even in that case a good thing about this (as opposed to the "ghost trail" from Possession) is that it doesn't replace legs. So if you're tight on space you could easily display this without the stand, even if it might not have quite the same wow factor. For me, one nice thing that these pics confirm is that Nya's hair with headband does have a small ponytail. It was a little unclear from some of the other pics we'd gotten and seeing it here makes it a little more recognizable as modern Nya than some of the earlier pics, where it looked tousled but the ponytail wasn't clearly visible.

Neat build! The elaborate brick/stone facade here is interesting, but I can't help but wonder if it'd make more sense thematically for a stonemason or sculptor. I feel like it might tell a better story if the carpenter's house were itself crafted primarily from wood, so that their career would also appear to have impacted their choice of dwelling. Obviously in real life things don't always line up that conveniently, but for a standalone set proposal, having the elements of the build relate to each other like that feels like it'd make more of an impact.

That doesn't necessarily mean these will have access to everything Lego can do internally. This is still very much a small-scale project for Lego, compared to mass-produced sets like the main Ideas program results in—which will likely make things like custom prints or brand-new recolors less likely. That said, it's possible that they might afford these greater access to other prints that are already in production than the previous AFOL designer program did, which could mean existing torso prints like the Black Falcons torsos could maybe be reused. Hard to say for sure this early on.

One thing to keep in mind is that one of the few TV series Lego worked on that did make it to air pre-Ninjago was Galidor. And that failed so hard that it sort of explains the reluctance to focus that much on TV for at least everything post-2002, up to when Ninjago proved they could do a full TV series that actually worked. Galidor's failure was obviously due to numerous factors including ones that didn't apply to other themes, but issues specific to TV were among them. In the U.S., the show premiered on Fox Kids during what was probably the peak of the competing Kids WB programming block (which had hot shows like Pokémon and Justice League while Fox Kids mostly coasted on the earlier success of Power Rangers and picked up also-ran cartoons and anime to try to capture some of that craze). In the U.K., I've heard that TV advertising laws forced the show to debut more than a half a year after the launch of the accompanying toyline, kneecapping its effectiveness at getting kids to care about the toys when it mattered. Those kinds of issues probably weren't encouraging for Lego, to say the least. And to be honest, before that Lego did not have that much experience partnering with media companies. It was only in 1999 that Lego did their first movie licensed theme (Star Wars), and only a couple years before that that they started with tie-in media like software (with Lego Island). And even some of those things came with their own missteps—the early "Lego Media" software involved much more in-house development on Lego's part compared to later games. I feel like that kind of approach, if it had been applied to a cartoon series as well, could easily have backfired hard for the company. Perhaps it's a good thing, then, that Lego only re-attempted to break into TV once their financial situation was more secure and they had a better system in place for licensing their own IPs out and retaining creative control without feeling the pressure to do it all themselves.

Yesterday I went out to the Lego store and picked up the White Dragon Horse Jet! It's such a great build. Having it in hand, I love how all three positions for the wings look great, ranging from straight horizontal which most resembles an actual jet to a steep 45° angle for each wing which feels reminiscent of something out of Star Fox. I don't think there's any sort of Monkie Kid wishlist topic yet? I'd still love to see Mei get a mech at some point. In the show she consistently scores higher than MK at the "Monkey Mech" fighting game, where she plays as a White Dragon Horse-themed mech, and in the Season 1 finale she got a chance to pilot the actual Monkey King mech while MK faced off with DBK. It'd be awesome to see a mech of her own appear as a set in the future, especially if it can maintain the kind of amazing shaping and detailing that her jet has!

The last of those hasn't been used since Aquazone, so would be unlikely to appear recolored. The shorter version, on the other hand, has been used quite recently, including in solid colors like black and white, so a light or dark bluish grey version showing up in the future doesn't seem that farfetched.

If you had any inclination to collect more of the theme, I might sooner recommend springing for one of the more expensive sets with Sandy. The $60 speedboat set has an exclusive Spider Queen fig, a Pigsy fig that's only in that set and the food truck, and Mo the cat, along with a bulky but interesting watercraft. And on the higher end of the price scale, both last year's HQ and this year's Dronecopter have way more display potential as (I'd argue) some of the most visually impressive sets in recent years. But if all you want is the figs, buying them individually will likely be way cheaper than any other sets that have Sandy would be, and I don't think the Iron Bull Tank would necessarily have that much impact as a standalone set when it comes to either parts or display.

In addition to this, as long as the theme remains exclusive to Lego brand retail stores and Lego.com in much of the world, we're less likely to see leaks for Monkie Kid—which doesn't mean they can't or won't happen for certain, just that it's a lot easier for Lego to keep future sets under wraps than it is for other themes. As such, it's harder to "rely" on leaks as a gauge for what future sets are in store and when they're likely to debut.

You really can't go wrong with either of them—both are great for their own reasons. I love the improved articulation and chunkiness of Zane's, but Lloyd's is one of the most gorgeously proportioned and streamlined mechs we've gotten in Ninjago, IMO.