Lyichir

I would hesitate to say that BrickHeadz are exactly the same situation as modulars, simply because unlike something like the modulars (which occupy a high price point and are released one at a time on a predictable schedule to avoid cannibalizing one another's sales), BrickHeadz is a much larger product category at typically low price points that can be sold alongside one another with minimal risk. That said, I think it'd be tough for an "ordinary" $10 BrickHeadz set to win out over other, more original submissions. A more unusual product idea that simply uses the BrickHeadz format (such as an iconic vehicle or scene that fits BrickHeadz characters) might stand a better chance.

Huh? Silly and zany is one of the key ways to BECOME popular with children. Cartoons like Spongebob haven't lasted umpteen many years on account of their lore. It's comparatively much harder for more "serious" action cartoons to attract and retain an audience, unfortunately (which is part of why Teen Titans Go has been vastly more successful than its more dramatic precursor, and why shows like The Legend of Korra often struggle to achieve sustained ratings success despite critical acclaim). Granted, that's been what I've generally seen as an American animation fan. Obviously the greater prominence of action cartoons in Japan proves that that isn't universal, and I have very little idea what kinds of cartoons do or don't play best to a Chinese audience.

I don't really think they will have to. These days modulars are some of the only sets to use traditional baseplates and to be honest I don't see that necessarily needing to change. They could easily continue to use the classic baseplates for compatibility's sake, while other themes move on to other types of bases. It's not like modulars were ever really easy to use with road plates in the first place—the lack of built-in curbs on this new road system could arguably make it more easy to use with modulars, rather than less.

I feel like you could stand to improve the color blocking a little. As it is the amount of greebling and the lack of strong color coordination kind of makes it hard to make out which part of the mech is which (for example, in the first picture you posted it takes a few seconds to discern where the right arm ends and the torso/right leg begins). Organizing the color scheme a little more effectively would allow you to maintain the high level of additional detail you've added while still making the overall form and silhouette of the mech more "readable".

Still no. I'm hoping that now that all the episodes of the first season have presumably aired in China it will debut worldwide soon, but there's still been no announcement of when or how...

Finally picked up the Starter Pack and multiple other sets yesterday. I built the starter pack and am quite impressed so far, though it did reinforce my need to tidy up a little more—you really do need a big open space to play with these, an issue that I suspect will only get more apparent once I build more of the sets and link them together. The little TV tray that I was building on sufficed for the build itself but was disastrous when I tried to play a round, since the toppling tower fell off the side and its segments and Bowser Jr. fell far out of reach. Having more of them in hand, I still adore the brick-built enemies and the new molds that enable them, which seem wonderfully versatile. Can't wait to see what they come up with for next year!

What do you mean? The sets you mention all have black backdrops on the boxes. Some of them subtly accent it—for instance, the Haunted House has a spooky glow around it and the Elf Club House has snowflakes falling, but all in all it tends to be pretty consistent. If you're asking why they opted for that, the standardized boxart was apparently to help adult buyers recognize which sets were "for them", since previously the boxart for things like UCS Star Wars, Creator Expert, and various other adult-focused sets were all quite different. I'm not totally in favor of it since the boxart for some such sets in the past (such as the UCS Sandcrawler) was drop-dead gorgeous, while these feel like much more sterile product showcases. But then again I've seen countless AFOLs complain this year about boxart like the Hidden Side or Ninjago sets for this summer being "too busy" and "hard to make out" so I suppose there's no pleasing everyone. I will say that Lego's approach here is not entirely unlike what Hasbro does for its "Star Wars The Black Series" and "Marvel Legends" lines of higher-end action figures, and that strategy has apparently worked for them..

The Toad's Hideaway set is cute! Doesn't seem to have any legitimately exclusive contents, making it not too big a deal to miss out on, but it does vary its contents a little from the other sets, for instance by adding a small fence for scenery and adding a chimney to the Toad house, which are some great ideas that could also be applied to custom courses. Convention exclusives are in a weird place in this year when all major conventions have been cancelled, but I don't really see the merit in complaining about a set like this with no exclusive contents just because it isn't "fair" that fewer people can get it. The thing about a set like this is that if it hadn't been produced as a limited series for a convention, it probably wouldn't have been produced at all. Cutting a limited-edition set wouldn't and couldn't magically free up resources to produce the same thing in a much greater quantity, and the fact that this set doesn't have any exclusive contents would probably mean that producing and selling it on a wider scale would mostly only serve to cannibalize sales of the larger Toad's Treasure Hunt set. Nobody would be better off by this set not existing, there'd just be one less option for people who do get the chance to obtain it.

Somebody on Twitter linked a Google Drive folder that's been uploading the episodes in both English and Chinese. Here's the link: https://t.co/WIUC6sOt16?amp=1 Quality varies since it's being recorded from a stream with commercials, so I'm still eager to get a "legit" release in the U.S., but for now it's the best way I've found to watch them.

Somebody on Twitter linked a Google Drive folder that's been uploading the episodes in both English and Chinese. Here's the link: https://t.co/WIUC6sOt16?amp=1

Hm... not a lot of activity here lately... The past couple weeks new episodes of Monkie Kid have been airing in China and Malaysia. So far episodes 1–10 have aired in Chinese and episodes 1–6 have aired in English. It seems like episode 10 might be the "season finale", so there are some potential spoilers for what might come next, for both sets and story...

So what partnerships are you thinking of, exactly? Because off the top of my head there's Ikea, Adidas, and Levis. That's three, maybe four if you count the Uniqlo collab from last year. Still, you can count all of those on one hand. I can't comprehend why that would be considered "too much", especially since it's largely other companies paying to license the Lego brand rather than the other way around. Personally, I'm a fan who used to love wearing a Lego backpack, Bionicle sneakers, and Lego club T-shirts when I was a kid. And then I grew up and... there was pretty much nothing left. It felt like practically a miracle when The Lego Movie came out and suddenly you could actually FIND adult-sized Lego merch (albeit only at Hot Topic, for an extremely limited time). Otherwise, I had to make do with fan-made shirts of varying quality, or things I made myself. I understand how other people might consider it tacky or unnecessary to wear Lego on their person, but for me, it's both a way to express myself and something my ADHD brain can fidget with during lulls in activity. I did the same with my Lego-backed iPhone case, starting with the third-party BrickCase, then an official Lego-licensed Belkin case, and now a non-Lego case that I've customized with a baseplate my dad helped me cut to size. In general, I've gotten used to these sorts of collaborations popping up, lasting a year or two, and then going away. So with how much I like these sorts of things in general and how easy it is to miss out on them when they do happen, I hardly think these are "too much". If anything, I wish some of them were bigger. Imagine if the Levi's collab, instead of all sharing a primary-heavy color scheme, came in a variety of more harmonized color schemes like blues or greens so you could better coordinate a variety of outfits around them (and for that matter, if more of them came in women's sizes, an issue I recently saw raised in a Facebook group). Imagine if the Ikea cases actually came in more colors and a wider variety of sizes, allowing you to better tailor their use to other applications or parts of your collection. Right now these collaborations are so limited that they have to draw solely from the most basic aspects of the Lego brand identity, but I don't think AFOLs would be nearly as apathetic about these if the shoes were, say, Classic-Space branded.

I would wager no. Even with new molds, CMFs focus entirely on minifigures with no other buildable components, and as a blind-packaged assortment they represent a very different type of product category than a typical boxed Ideas set. Also, like modulars, they represent a product category with a very deliberately engineered release schedule, which would make inserting a fan-designed series into the lineup liable to cannibalize sales of other series.

I just looked on the shop site for my region (U.S.) and none of the sets seem to be listed as retiring soon—surprisingly, not even the year one sets. Seems to be different for Europe, where all of the year one sets and the haunted fairground are listed that way.

You seem to be using a definition of evergreen that is different from Lego's own. Ninjago is evergreen. Friends (which is in fact a story-driven theme) is evergreen. A theme possibly no longer being evergreen in the future does not invalidate it being considered such until its fortunes change—after all, within my lifetime themes like Castle and Space were themselves considered evergreen, whereas now they tend to be far more scarce. Also, you seem to be operating on the assumption that Ninjago's fortunes declining and it ending as a result is a foregone conclusion, which, based on the wider toy industry, is not really all that guaranteed? Look at how long non-Lego brands like Power Rangers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Transformers have been around. That hasn't always been because of having one, steady media presence and continuity, but rather is a result of periodic refreshes, reboots, and reimaginings that keep the brands fresh, relevant, and enjoyable by new generations of kids. Ninjago, notably, has only really done that once (when the movie debuted), so there are definitely a lot of avenues the brand could potentially take in the future if it became evident that a new approach was necessary. The thing about Ninjago compared to most other Lego brands is it's really their first major IP (besides maybe Bionicle) to really have that kind of persistent presence. Back in the '80s and '90s when other toy companies were hitting it big with those sorts of media tie-ins, Lego was a long way away from having any brands that extended so far beyond the toys themselves. This has been their first experience building a brand with that kind of cultural cachet. Now, I'm not saying it's a guarantee that Ninjago will be around in 10 to 20 years. But I am saying that it's far too early to insist that it won't, when the theme has already broken so many other precedents for Lego over the years and shows no obvious signs of stopping.

Since nobody's been posting about it, FYI new episodes have been airing for two weeks now. So far at least six episodes (not including the pilot) have aired in China and four have aired in Malaysia (in English).

Keep in mind that re-releasing a more recent set is generally a lot easier than re-releasing an older one, considering that not only is there less risk of older molds being necessary, but more of the parts are likely to still be in current use across other sets to boot. I don't think this is related to the previous two "out of the vault" re-releases. It could just be tied in with Lego's recent push to have more advanced models for adult builders available, or even just feedback from buyers disappointed that they could no longer get ahold of those sets.

I always find this sort of criticism a little odd because it simultaneously complains about mass cultural nostalgia, while longing for a far more niche, less widespread but no more valid form of nostalgia. The number of kids who enjoyed Classic Space in the 80s are a fraction of the number of kids who enjoyed Star Wars when it came out, and an even smaller fraction of the number of kids who enjoyed it in the many intervening years on video and DVD. By any measure, Lego is catering to a lot more people with sets like this than they would be by releasing new Classic Space sets. Now, you might argue that Classic Space deserves special treatment because it's a key part of Lego's own history. But at this point, Star Wars is an even bigger part. Lego Star Wars has been around for twenty years at this point, through bad times and good alike. Classic Space is practically a blip in Lego's history compared to that. So while it'll always occupy a special role as Lego's FIRST space theme, today Star Wars has done much, much more to shape Lego's position in the toy industry at present. I get the same sort of thing from my fellow Bionicle fans, who feel spurned because Bionicle is no longer around and to them, as a theme that occupied a special place in their childhoods and saved Lego from bankruptcy, they think it deserves better. But it's not about what a theme "deserves" so much as about what is working with the kids of today. And currently action figures just aren't experiencing the same demand as they were back then. It's sad and a little bittersweet, but Lego didn't get to where they are now by prioritizing their own corporate history above the interests and passions of their core audience. I have little doubt that Lego will reexplore Space as a genre at some point. I'll probably be super-excited to buy some sets when they do! But they're not about to jettison a top-selling theme just to appease a few older fans.

It's not totally clear if that comment was referring to media content and sets for upcoming years, or additional media content for this year. With an announcement possibly expected "soon", I'd lean toward the latter—it's not a stretch to assume that we might get additional webisodes covering the second half year's sets and story like we did for the first half of this year (possibly timed to be released as we get closer to Halloween).

These look decent to me. The hoodie seems like the only one that really fits my current fashion sense (yay bold primary colors!), but the others remind me of some of the kinds of Lego luggage and similar merch that I loved to bits when I was a kid. And truth be told I've been wishing for more Lego-themed clothing in adult sizes for ages now. So I hope that this is successful and can pave the way for an even wider variety of Lego-licensed fashion, especially if it continues to integrate actual Lego parts like these.

Eh... I'm operating on the assumption that Lego Mario is inevitably out of scale with most other characters thanks to his electronics. Making Peach that much taller than him would make her even larger than Bowser, and would make it a serious challenge to make a decent-looking castle for her without making it gigantic compared to other settings and course objects. Keeping Peach at a modest scale like this would be better for customization since she wouldn't look as out of place next to other enemies, objects, or landmarks.

Here's a link to where you can download the game guide on the Ninjago website: https://www.lego.com/r/www/r/portals/-/media/campaigns/kids/ninjago/choose-the-path/play-guides/ninjago_howtoplayguide_2hy20_v4_en_en_online.pdf?l.r=-1528996664 Speaking of which, I hate the new website... took me forever to find the page it was on, eventually had to find my own copy I had downloaded earlier to google for the correct page to download it on. I know I'm not really the target audience for the kids side of Lego.com, but even so it's kind of a web design nightmare for me.

Ooh, I hadn't heard about that! Maybe I'll pick up some of the Wave 2 sets to get that, then.

Has anybody in the U.S. seen the new Ninjago sets at stores like Target or Wal-Mart? I've been doing a lot of my Lego shopping online lately but my sister's girlfriend is visiting and I wanted to try to get the Legacy Destiny's Bounty for them to build together before she leaves next week, so I'm not sure whether I'd be able to get it on time if I ordered it. A couple days ago I checked Wal-Mart to see if they had it yet, but it didn't look like they had many newer Ninjago or Hidden Side sets at all, so I was wondering if they were planning to put the new sets on shelves at the start of this month since that was technically when they were delayed to (even though online they've been available since the 24th of last month). I'm gonna be on the road some today and will probably check Wal-Mart again but it'd be helpful to know if anyone else from the U.S. has had any luck finding them in physical stores in their area.

It's possible, but I would consider it unlikely. For starters, it's very tied to the not-particularly-successful Ninjago Movie, which the series has for the most part moved past and isn't all that likely to revisit (in all likelihood, this new set as well as future sets will be primarily based on the main Ninjago TV continuity and those versions of the ninja, despite being able to link up to its more movie-inspired predecessors). It also runs into the same issue as the Modular Building rereleases people often hope for—a rerelease of an earlier set really mostly appeals to people who didn't get the original the first time around, whereas a brand-new expansion has the potential to appeal to both people for whom the new set will be their first foray into that category of set and people who did get the original and are looking to expand.