Lyichir

I can't manage to figure it out easily either (not even by trying to manually write the text into Google Translate), but my assumption had been that rather than marking locations, they were describing each scene from the Monkey King stories that is depicted there. I'd love to have someone more educated elucidate me on what they actually say, though. EDIT: I can decipher a little bit of the banner above the area where Macaque and MK are fighting... I can see 真假王, which Google tells me means "true and false king". There's two other characters I can't decipher, but I think it's describing the battle between the Monkey King and Macaque? Most of the other banners are too blurry for me to even try to decipher.

Sadly without any Toy Fairs or similar events this year, it's harder to predict any specific date when we might expect to get more info.

So you think the clip itself is ratcheted? I don't see how it could be and still connect to the same parts with 3.2mm bars that have existed for decades (such as the 2x2 plate with octagonal bars or the 1x2 tile with handle). These aren't connecting to parts with notches for a ratcheted joint to "click" into. And in most of the sets, they don't seem to be supporting a ton of weight—six legs supported by 3.2mm bars and clips feels like plenty for a small spider, since no one leg is bearing a majority of the "weight". You can see the piece in question in high resolution here, and it's clearly connected to a part with a 3.2mm bar not unlike past minifigures with "spider legs" like Spy Clops from the Agents theme or Spinlyn and Scutter from Chima have used. The only set where they seem to support something substantially larger is on the Spider Queen's "battle rig" here, which from the looks of it is designed so that the ends of the legs reach the ground even with the central body flat on the same surface.

Fairly sure it's just one (molded) part, with a 90° bend. As cool as an articulated "elbow" would be it would have to be extremely compact, and it doesn't look like there's one in any of the pics. It still looks like a cool part, and will complement the other "bar holder" pieces nicely.

Also possibly of interest to historic builders are the new roof slopes shown here (also appearing on the big spider base). Should be great for Asian architecture but could potentially have some creative uses in other styles as well.

I LOVE the look of the new sets! The Arachnoid base is huge and seems to have a great look about it. People compare it to Chima but to me it reminds me more of Insectoids or massive Exo-Force mechs like the Striking Venom. Flower Fruit Mountain is an amazing set in terms of landscaping and seems to include not just Monkie Kid, Macaque, and two small monkey figs, but also FOUR Monkey King figures representing different periods in his life! And the White Dragon Horse Jet looks remarkably unique as far as the build is concerned... a big step up from last year's bike. The Lion Guardian doesn't really do it for me, on the other hand... kinda chunky and unwieldy looking (though I love the inclusion of what looks like parts of the antigravity arcade). Red Son's jet looks fairly solid but also pretty non-essential if I get the Red Son figure from the Dronecopter set. And the Cloud Bike is... well, it's a small set with two bikes. It's not bad, and the inclusion of what looks like a unique spider baddie might be enough for me to pick it up, but it also doesn't wow me the way a lot of Monkie Kid's vehicles have.

It's not a leak, just hasn't aired worldwide yet. Here's a twitter thread compiling most of the major updates from yesterday, including both short and long versions of the trailer. This morning Villads Spangsberg (one of the executive producers of the show) also shared this poster for the new season, which seems to include a new bigfig minion of the Spider Queen (among other characters we'd seen in the Dronecopter set).

The Arachnoid Base looks incredible! Obviously not going to be as big as in the cartoon, but will probably be an awesome set and build anyway. I'm very excited... Lego has also started putting episodes of the TV series on their YouTube, though they're currently blocked in every country except Malaysia. Still, I'm hoping this means that a wider release of the TV series and an official reveal of the upcoming sets could both drop within the next week or so!

I'm with you on that! I recently was feeling a bit nostalgic for Breath of the Wild (having gotten it on Wii U when it first came out but since then getting a Switch and putting it into storage), so I broke the console out again and hooked it up to my TV. Even though I didn't have any major quests left to do, just aimlessly exploring for the occasional Korok Seed or treasure chest felt like coming home... I'd love it if we might finally get sets based off of that, if not a broader Zelda theme. Of course, to be honest it's quite hazy as to when that will come out. Could be next year or could still be several years from now. So far Lego's collaborations with Nintendo have benefitted from not being tied to any specific major game release date, so I'm not exactly sure what the chances are of them launching a theme like that alongside a new game. I'd love to be wrong, but if not, there's still plenty of opportunity for another sort of castle theme.

All three of the themes you're describing got in anyway, so it honestly sounds like you're just whining that they have to share a poll with Bionicle...

I can't see how starting over (and by extension tossing out all the votes from the first round) would seem any fairer. It'd definitely come across to Bionicle fans as sour grapes. Adding Castle to the pool of front-runners is probably the least disruptive way of appeasing people who were unsatisfied with the way the first poll was set up without upsetting people who were fine with it.

I don't know about that. While Baba Yaga is definitely a very distinctly Russian/Slavic folktale character, that's not to say they aren't known and recognized to a lesser extent in other regions, especially among fans of fantasy, mythology, or folk stories. If Lego can make a whole theme about the Monkey King, it's not too far-fetched to think a single set based on the Baba Yaga could be made and marketed globally as well.

While that could certainly be a worthy topic of discussion, I feel like future Ninjago City expansions would be better suited to their own topic, much like the modular building rumors/ideas topic in the Town forum. After all, though we don't know when another expansion will be released, it PROBABLY won't be another 2021 set.

Just popped into this topic on a whim (not much of a pirate builder myself, though I loved Barracuda Bay). But I thought I might mention another option similar to the knob wheel mentioned above—the new gear plates that have appeared in several themes. They're a bit bigger than the knob wheel, but flatter as well, so could potentially be made to fit inside the deck more easily depending on how it's built. The reason it occurred to me is that it's used interlocked with the ship's wheel piece in one of the Super Mario sets, so could possibly be made to work for this purpose as well. It has also been used in combination with the knob wheel itself, so it's possible that a solution with both might work. Again, a more experienced ship builder would probably be able to find out a little more about the advantages and disadvantages a part like this might have—I just wanted to suggest it as another possible option!

It's absolutely possible that we could see additional sets down the line, especially now that they've shown themselves to be open to doing those under normal Ninjago/Ninjago Legacy branding. That said, it's too early to know when we might expect something like that. It's possible that Lego would continue to release them on a yearly basis like they do for ongoing series like the Modular Buildings or Winter Village sets, but I'm not sure that that's likely. These sets are much larger and more expensive than those other series, making them more of a commitment to purchase, and up to this point Ninjago as a theme has really only had one large "Direct to Consumer" set available at a time (Ninjago City Docks was smaller and cheaper than the original Ninjago City and released at regular retail stores). So it's entirely possible that the next Ninjago City set would only be released when this current one is at or near its retirement. Really there's no way of knowing when another set in the series comes out until it comes out—so far there's no clear "pattern" to extrapolate from. I will say that I doubt the fact that there are two corners will prevent future additions. Whether the next installment is a straight section or a corner, I expect it to most likely be marketed primarily as attaching to the Gardens and not the other two. I think the Gardens was marketed as connecting to the earlier models primarily because there were no other recent/current additions to the series, but if you look at the Modular Building series, they usually are only photographed with and marketed as connecting to two or three of the other recent installments. A subsequent installment in the Ninjago City series would likely take the same tack, being displayed to the right of the Gardens but without the length of the other two buildings added. And anybody who does have the full series is probably resourceful enough to figure out a display solution that allows for all of them, either by displaying them on a free-standing table or by merely beginning another row of buildings across the canal from the current one. And of course, with all that said... just because the door is open to future installments does not amount to any sort of guarantee that we'll get them, or that future Ninjago D2C sets will fit into that series. I personally think it's likely that they would, simply because that modular style has proven popular and many other subjects could be adapted to work with it, but there's nothing stopping Lego from deciding that the next Ninjago D2C would be a standalone set like the Temple of Airjitzu or something entirely different from any previous Ninjago D2Cs, like a massive vehicle or dragon.

I wouldn't really consider that "foolish". I know they might not be the most popular among AFOLs, but both franchises seem to me like they're big "gets" for Lego—they're both extremely popular brands with kids, and not only does Lego profit from them by making sets based on them but they also "lock out" competitors from doing the same. And having a variety of smaller licenses (and not just the huge tentpole franchises like Star Wars and Super Heroes) helps to diversify risk, and ensure that Lego doesn't end up in a situation like they did in 2003 (when their three major franchises took a gap year between movies, vastly reducing the popularity of their respective themes). I expect that the introduction of Trolls and Minions licenses last year was partly meant to compensate for the reduced profile of the Marvel and Star Wars franchises, both of which went without major movie releases last year after wrapping up massive, multi-year sagas with Avengers Endgame and Rise of Skywalker. And in the case of Trolls in particular, Lego's choice to license it probably paid off after COVID knocked theaters for a loop and movies like Black Widow ended up delayed while Trolls World Tour was made into a surprise streaming hit. Don't get me wrong, I personally prefer original themes over licenses in almost all cases, including the two aforementioned themes. But even "one-off" licenses like you describe have their place and a strategic purpose in Lego's portfolio—not "random" at all.

It's also possible that they just wanted to debut the new hairpiece in the Nya-focused wave so that it would specifically stand out more compared to the preceding wave. Whatever the reason, it's cool to get a new hairpiece for Nya! It might take a little getting used to, but then again so did her ponytail hairstyle from the movie. I am also curious about the ninja outfits we'll be getting with the underwater wave... while a "rebreather" type accessory is likely, it's not yet quite clear whether it'll use the existing one or a new one. And for that matter, whether it'll be paired with any other sort of existing or new neck accessory (I could definitely see them introducing a new accessory that perhaps combines shoulder armor of some sort with oxygen tanks)

Maybe not, but then, the rebooted Pirate and Castle themes were both targeted at a much broader audience than AFOLs. It's not unlikely that the older audience for Ideas sets is enough to support individual, high-dollar sets like Barracuda Bay or the Blacksmith's Shop, but not enough to collectively make up the sales to sustain a larger, ongoing theme (with most sets in a theme like that being cheaper and produced in higher numbers). For that you need a much broader kid audience—and if they don't materialize, no amount of AFOL passion would make up the difference. This applies to Bionicle too, by the way, which is a part of what makes me hopeful that an individual tribute set like the one this contest would result in could be more likely to succeed than a full theme revival like the one that faltered back in 2016. Creating one carefully crafted Bionicle set that is targeted at the narrow but passionate demographic of longtime fans might be easier than trying to make a full theme into the kind of hit it was back in the early 2000s.

It's here. I imagine the other three parts are scheduled to release throughout the year to help keep the hype around the anniversary going.

If they're not holding out until the absolute last minute like they did last year, a reveal around Chinese New Year (the 12th of next month) could be likely.

Okay! I've revised my post below.

I've seen this brought up a lot but more than anything else, this seems to be because of how immensely popular Bionicle was in its heyday. Because so many kids bought Bionicle, the used/secondhand market ended up positively glut with it as kids grew out of it, depressing the cost of bulk parts severely. By contrast, new in box Bionicle sets (especially limited edition/store exclusive sets) tend to perform better on the aftermarket. This is one reason why sales on the secondhand market can be such a poor way to judge the popularity of a set or theme, because sets produced and sold in high quantities generally underperform on the aftermarket compared to sets that are produced or sold in lower quantities, sometimes including outright flops. In any case, a Bionicle tribute set is unlikely to be faced with this issue because it's unlikely to use classic Bionicle parts in the first place (since most if not all of those are long retired), meaning that the inventory is likely to be composed of newer System or Technic parts, potentially including new printed parts or recolors that could become valuable or sought after over time.

In the green apartment? I assumed that was because on the forward-facing wall, the bricks are hidden by the "bed" and so their hollow undersides are covered. But on the rear-facing wall, they are not. Using plates instead of bricks makes the visible "surface" of the underside of those parts look less deep, and specifically using 1x2 plates makes them look somewhat like drawers (with the "tube" in the underside of the plate resembling a handle in the center of each drawer). An alternative if they had not wanted that surface to resemble drawers would be to use 2x2 inverted tiles in the place of the four 1x2 plates visible from the inside. But that would still require the use of 2x3 plates and 1x2 plates to fill up the rest of that "space". Using 1x2 plates for the entire reverse surface both adds detail and reduces the variety of parts that would need to be used.

Getting slightly off-topic, but I think a big issue that people seem to be glossing over re:depiction of Native Americans is not just that the depiction of the Natives themselves can be offensive, but also that a depiction of relations between Native Americans and white settlers as hunky-dory and peaceful could be EQUALLY offensive. The ugly reality of "Cowboys vs. Indians" play scenarios isn't just that the cowboys, for the most part, were the AGGRESSORS, displacing the native population and eventually finishing the job via genocide (as exemplified by the "Trail of Tears", where natives were marched to reservations against their will with many dying along the way). Sugar-coating that reality would be an offensive whitewashing of history, but not doing so would result in a grim and unsettling scenario unfit for a children's toy. The reason why the Native American figures in the CMFs work is that they are presented in a vacuum, as examples of their culture that are not framed by their interactions with a colonial power. They have spears and arrows because, culturally, those are what they used to hunt and to protect their homes. Inserting them into sets with cowboys and other settlers, on the other hand, creates a tension that can't be resolved in a way that both works for a toy and does justice to the reality of that scenario.

Not with these specific details, but artifacts being stolen from the museum has been a plot point several times over the course of the series. So it makes sense to have that as a "play scenario" for this set.