Lyichir

Sorry to break it to you, but no petition is going to convince Lego to hold off on replacing Power Functions, least of all one with a paltry 100 signatures. That's a drop in the bucket for a corporation as large as Lego—even their own in-house Lego Ideas program requires 100 times that many votes for a product idea to even be considered. The Powered Up system is essentially "Power Functions 2.0". It's replacing the old Power Functions much like Power Functions itself replaced the old 9V system of motors. The good news is that if you prefer you can continue to use the existing Power Functions system if you prefer. Even once Lego stops selling Power Functions components, the aftermarket should remain well-supplied for a good while given Power Functions' ubiquity for well over a decade. Additionally, even if you do choose to upgrade to Powered Up (which may be a necessity when it comes to powering future sets), there'll be nothing forcing you to discard your old Power Functions components—they just won't work natively with the new Powered Up equipment.

Personally I always viewed the "baby dragon" in the Wizard set as a taxidermied fake, the kind of oddity or hoax you might see a wizard use to impress or astound guests.

Eh, while I definitely agree that I wish Nya would get more vehicles, I also am a little glad that she hasn't ended up the "Aquaman" of the group with her getting a watercraft no matter how contrived the scenario has to be to make it fit in with the setting. I'd much rather she get a wider range of vehicles including land vehicles, aircraft, watercraft, and mechs like everyone else.

Eh, it'll continue to serve its use for a little while longer at least. One of the benefits of having separate threads is that the 2021 thread can focus on those sets and news related to them, while this one can still be a place to discuss impressions of this year's sets from late adopters as well as things like sales and deals on them as they get closer to retirement.

Considering Ninjago dragons are typically brick built, I don't know if we'd get one with transparent colors as the dominant color scheme. Lego tends to avoid builds in a single color in general, and transparent colors have the added challenge of potentially making the instructions complicated to follow (since on a large build it could be hard to keep track of which parts are newly placed and which are from previous steps).

I think it is the first time we've gotten the face scarf piece in azure, though.

Honestly I'm not bothered by the golden ninja having identical leg prints? This is the first time I even noticed it, to be honest. The gold ninja's costumes are already effectively differentiated by their different masks and torsos. I don't see how sharing a leg print (one that works well for all of them given their shared dominant color) makes them "less collectible". EDIT: Actually, looking at some of the more recent pictures, a cut corner that bothers me more is the two ghost generals in the Titan Mech set sharing a torso print and possibly even face prints. If they'd been meant to be generic ghost warriors it'd be a different story, but considering how distinct Ghoultar and Soul Archer's designs were in their debut arc it's a shame that, for instance, Ghoultar no longer has a skull and visible ribcage. Luckily I have the original versions of those characters so it's no major loss for me personally (and I appreciate some of the changes made like the purple streak in the ghost trail instead of dark blue to help ensure that these don't feel redundant to longtime collectors like myself).

Pretty sure the armor piece is the same mold as the earlier Galaxy Trooper CMF.

I feel like this kind of conspiracy theory isn't necessary to explain shortages, nor does it even make sense for that matter. I would think that FAKING a set being "out of stock" (and thus ensuring that people who look for it during that period would leave disappointed) would do much, much more harm than the chance of increased demand when sets became available again would merit. I just was looking on Lego.com yesterday to give gift suggestions for a friend of my Mom's, for example, and 90% of the Lego Friends sets were out of stock! With the holiday getting closer and closer, it's less likely for buyers to wait around for sets to be restocked (especially with no real assurance of when that would happen) and more likely that they'd buy something else (even a non-Lego gift) in its place. So why gamble on the possibility of future demand if the demand is already there and can be fulfilled immediately? The more obvious explanation for "out of stock" sets suddenly becoming available again is that more sets were delivered from the factories, or inventory was reshuffled to account for what avenues were getting the most demand. Earlier this summer, for example, COVID-driven shortages on Lego.com led some orders on the site to be fulfilled and shipped from closed retail stores. It's not unbelievable that something similar might be happening here.

I'm kinda happy they didn't—not just because I prefer the new hair, but also because this is the first time we've gotten Zane's newer hair piece in silver.

Hard to tell with only one set revealed so far (the others could feature completely different villains for all we know) but it definitely seems like at the very least some of the villains have developed alliances with each other.

Same here. The 1-wide bracelets have advantages and disadvantages. Including two per pack means that a single pack will be good for sharing with friends and family (or for linking together if your wrists are too wide for a single bracelet), and the reduced size will likely make printed tiles like the ones in the Extra Dots packs stand out a little more, but I imagine it'll be harder to do complex mosaics/patterns with just one stud of width.

I certainly wouldn't rule out getting something like that in this upcoming wave. We've only seen one of the new sets for next year so far, and based on its numbering it's likely to be the largest of the sets in that wave. That leaves plenty of opportunity still for smaller, cheaper sets.

It has plenty of books—the others are just brick-built and attached to the shelves themselves. As neat as it would be to get a variety of book pieces, having a bunch of shelves full of loose books could be a recipe for disaster when it came time to move the completed set.

I kind of agree with you. I'm personally not the most fond of how it looks, but then again I was personally never that fond of the Overlord Dragon in the show. It felt like a weird plot twist just to end it on a dragon vs. dragon showdown and the look of it was weird—all the fleshiness of the other dragons in the show without the strong physical foundation provided by original set designs to counteract that. In that sense, the new version looks about as accurate as it probably could have gotten. I still think that of the Legacy sets for next year this feels like one of the most skippable to me. I've already got figs I'm satisfied with from last year's Golden Dragon set and I've gone enough years without a dragon version of the Overlord that I don't feel the need for one now. Compared to several of the other sets, which feel like stronger updates of classic sets and feature cool commemorative minifigures, this one feels a bit like a pass for me.

This. The upper two floors of the Bookshop seem to me intended to be an apartment, probably the shop owner's. And while there's obviously features it lacks I feel like it has enough of them to get the point across. Personally I don't really mind the limited number of shelves in the Bookshop. A "realistic" number of shelves would likely feel fairly repetitive and I much prefer the variety of features in the final set. To me many of the recent modulars have felt stellar so the seemingly widespread sentiment that all the designers besides Jamie are rubbish rubs me the wrong way. If anything I'd rather see more and more designers take a crack at designing modular buildings, rather than see the theme go back to a single designer and risk stagnating. But maybe that's just me...

It wasn't merely decorative. In the Throwbots sets it was introduced in, the gear was used in larger combination models to sort of "chain" this gearbox together (in other words, have the worm gear on one engage the 24t gear on the top of the other). Later Bionicle parts evoked this same gearing but stopped using it functionally in most cases. I'm not 100% understanding how @Doug72 is intending to use it, but perhaps this part might work better for some purposes? https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=6588#T=C

I disagree about this. The original hood piece is dated. It was a fun touch in the Gamer's Market since it was used for a fig from very early on who had not previously been released, but for these figures it would be weird to get several ninja with good-looking modern hoods and one who gets stuck with one that's straight out of the '90s. Even the earlier Legacy sets had the good sense to replace those with a newer, more detailed hood design. I do agree that the half mask in gold would have probably been nice, maybe for Lloyd who seems to have not gotten a mask at all. One of the main advantages I see of these variants of the ninja getting more recent hoods, apart from those new hoods looking better in general and the molds remaining in production in the first place, is that the newer ones are dual molded. That means that even in uniforms dominated by gold, the ninja can retain elements of their original color schemes.

The "non Lego" contents in those pictures typically aren't actually included. For the dots sets that are used as storage accessories, a lot of the pictures often include those sorts of things as examples of how the sets can be used.

The exhaust was moved to the right side of the vehicle on the final model, but it wasn't removed. As for things like the logo and color scheme, keep in mind that those would have been decided on in conjunction with the license holder. They would not be things Lego decided on on their own. Personally as someone who basically knew nothing about the original car before the set was released, I really enjoyed the Caterham set. It used some fascinating and impressive building techniques to achieve the distinctive shaping.

Sand blue and orange... I wonder if the color scheme was chosen as a direct reference to the Titan XP, a much earlier robot-focused Creator set: https://brickset.com/sets/4508-1/Titan-XP

I would assume that the species at least are the same ones the cubes are designed based on—Flamingo, Dalmatian, Cat, Pug, and Bunny. The cat and dalmatian molds are probably the same ones that appear in 41439 and 41443, respectively. Colors are a mystery but it's possible that they also match the cubes themselves, in which case they'd each probably come in coral, white, cool yellow, light pink, and light blue.

Andrea's house, actually! As a fan of the TV series I love that her little sister and dad are finally appearing in a set, and that the house features a literal garage band to suit their talent for the performing arts!

Would they even need "new molds" for embedded tram rails? It seems like if anything, these new roads might make it easier to embed classic train track elements—just attach the new road sections to train tracks with tiles. The only thing you'd need new molds for is curves—but then, that's something they haven't got for the regular roads yet either. Like you say, if these catch on I expect the concept to be expanded significantly going forward. I especially like the "inclusivity" features of some of these sets, like the sports wheelchair in the skatepark and the guide dog in the city center. Not only are these great in terms of disability representation, but they're both great showcases of some of the features of these new road plates—the wheelchair since it can roll smoothly on the surface and the guide dog since it provides a pretty clear play scenario with the crosswalk.

Should somebody make a 2021 topic now that there are pictures? Lots of interesting things in the next wave, including locking boxes/drawers, cupcakes, new 3D diamond and star tiles, and half-width bracelets.