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Lyichir

Eurobricks Grand Dukes
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  1. Lyichir
    I've been fiddling around with concepts for characters and enemies digitally. Here's a recent one I was pretty happy with, a concept for what Princess Peach might look like (roughly scaled to other friendly characters like Toad, Toadette, and Yoshi):
  2. Lyichir
    Trailer for the new season of Monkie Kid! If the other episodes will be released soon in China, that could be a good sign for the first season becoming available elsewhere as well (especially if they are opting to air it on a service like Netflix that makes the whole first season available at once). You can see a fair number of the sets here (both the first and second wave), as well as a glimpse of a mysterious villain we haven't seen up to now who may be the Baigujing (White Bone Demon) from Journey to the West. It's possible that they're being set up as a sort of "big bad" for the theme.
  3. Lyichir
    Sure, but that's the case if pretty much any theme is a miss with its target audience. Obviously sales of the sets outside of China still help (and could potentially make a big difference in whether future waves remain exclusive or get picked up for a wider release), but we're very much not the focus of this particular theme.
  4. Lyichir
    Yes, Lego Brand Retail stores and Lego.com both get D2C sets. They just typically won't show up on shelves at other non-Lego owned retailers like Target, Walmart, or others.
  5. Lyichir
    Mostly size. Technically "D2C" refers to any set that is sold "direct to consumer" by Lego (including even smaller Lego-exclusive sets and gifts with purchase), but among the fan community it's usually used primarily to refer to those largest sets that are sold directly from Lego such as the modular buildings, Winter Village sets, and UCS Star Wars sets among others. Ninjago has had two big D2C sets so far: the Temple of Airjitzu from 2015 and Ninjago City from 2017. Ninjago City Docks from 2018, while comparable in size to those other two sets, was not actually a D2C set since it was sold through other retailers as well.
  6. Lyichir
    Oooh, that's a neat idea. With a scannable tile in the seat so that Mario has unique sorts of interactions based on his acceleration, angle, and so forth! I MOCed a digital version of a non-electronic kart for Lego Mario with a hole in the seat to scan objects on a "track", but given the size a track like that would have to be to scale to Lego Mario, a trackless RC version (perhaps with a few accessories like a start/finish line) would probably make much more sense.
  7. Lyichir
    Not much new to talk about until the new sets come out in a couple days or the TV series finally premieres globally. Personally I've been waiting on the edge of my seat for the TV series to get a Western release to give the fan community for this theme a much-needed shot in the arm.
  8. Lyichir
    I think it's a mistake to assume Lego EXPECTS the theme to become as big of a hit outside of China. My assumption since the theme's exclusivity was announced was that the reasoning for it was hesitation on the part of Lego's normal retail partners to buy in big on a theme that lacks the same cultural context for a Western audience. So instead, by keeping the theme exclusive to Lego.com and Lego Brand Retail, Lego may be accepting a reduced audience reach and producing the sets with that in mind (in other words, not producing as many sets for western markets as they would if they had to provide product to as many retail partners as a more widely released theme like Ninjago). Now, that may change. It's possible that, once the TV series receives a wider premiere and if sales of the current sets through Lego provide impressive enough returns, future waves of sets may end up given a wider release. I certainly wouldn't mind! But frankly I wouldn't be surprised if the initial plans for this theme didn't involve a Western release at all and were only adjusted after the backlash to the regional exclusivity of the Chinese New Year sets demonstrated a global demand for more regionally focused product lines, and even now the success of this theme may be measured more by its performance in China than by its popularity in other regions.
  9. Lyichir
    I don't think it's particularly common. In fact, I'm not used to Lego using CMYK printing in general—most of the printing they do, at least these days, is pad printing with pre-mixed ink colors. If this is CMYK (and the error you have suggests that it might be), then that makes the Roboriders wheels a bit of an exception to Lego's typical printing procedures.
  10. Lyichir
    I would guess that they deemed a single 1x6 tile reading "Nintendo" and another reading "Entertainment" as more versatile than if the two words were printed on the same piece (especially considering that either way "System" would still be printed on a separate tile).
  11. Lyichir
    If these use CMYK printing, yours looks like it's an error where the coat of yellow ink wasn't applied. Hence the oranges showing up as magenta, the greens showing up as blue, and the yellows showing up as a white underlayer.
  12. Lyichir
    I agree he'd probably be pretty much the same size for compatibility's sake (that way they could use the same molds/hardware). That said, if they did do Luigi as a digi-fig I wouldn't rule out them releasing other versions of the costumes as well (with the same molds as Mario's but with different colors/printing as necessary). I could see them releasing a pack with Luigi and some or all of the existing costume varieties recolored for him as a "player two" expansion pack, possibly for a similar price as the current starter set (especially since I don't foresee them pricing Luigi LOWER than Mario considering it could cannibalize sales of the starter set if a cheaper player character was available). That said, I'm not even 100% sure that they would do Luigi as a digi-fig. Two-player simultaneous play could be a challenge, after all, so keeping Mario as the only "player" and releasing Luigi as a brick-built ally character like Toad or Yoshi would be another option (especially since Luigi could use the same hat mold as Mario either way).
  13. Lyichir
    Finished building the HQ yesterday! It's really great, as I'd expected. I particularly love the various areas scaled to the Sandy bigfig, such as the control room, crow's nest, and living room. I'm sort of tempted to even expand it... I've been messing around on Stud.io with a potential mod that adds a fourth, smaller container beside the yellow one that includes a turntable "transformation" feature to transform Mei from her civilian clothes to her White Dragon Horse jumpsuit. I do sort of wish the corrugated wall panel piece came in more colors like white or green, though...
  14. Lyichir
    I don't get why people think there won't be additional shorts or anything. Hidden Side ending AFTER the current wave of sets does not mean that all promotion for that final wave would be pulled. If there were additional webisodes produced for that wave (and given that there were webisodes for the first half of this year I think it's likely that they were produced for the full year's story) then it would follow that those would be published as normal. It's a different scenario than Nexo Knights or Chima, which both ended on an abridged final year of sets and had had its story up to that point told through full TV seasons instead of online shorts.
  15. Lyichir
    Bony Beetle, Bone Goomba, Parabeetle, Freezie, Octoomba, Stingby, Mechakoopa and Crowber also come to mind as possibilities. There's also a chance that, like the Bob-omb in this wave, they might include an enemy who appears elsewhere but has not been in a blind-bag yet (perhaps something like Boo or Swoop who are so far limited to one set each). EDIT: Coin Coffer would be another good small enemy that could have good gameplay.
  16. Lyichir
    Very good model! I've already supported it on Lego Ideas. It just has so many amazing features—great detail, an amazingly irregular floor plan, modular design and features you don't often see in Lego castle sets like a toilet (that even incorporates a trapdoor—what a perfect play feature)!
  17. Lyichir
    It seemed like even in the documentary Nick Vas (the designer of that set) was having trouble getting his concept for that function to work properly in the early stages. The final version of the set also has to seriously reinforce the axles across the bottom of the vehicle to keep it stable, so it's possible that in the end the vehicle's large size necessitated a sturdier build.
  18. Lyichir
    So this might be of interest to some... the documentary about the making of the theme is apparently available to view on Chinese streaming sites: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV13z411B7Hj Best I can tell there's no English subtitles or dubbing for some of the dialogue that is in Chinese (which will probably be added for the international release), but you can still see some neat concepts and aspects of the design process. In terms of sets, there's a scene with an in-progress prototype of the Cloud Roadster, which at one point was apparently going to have a flexible chassis that allowed the wheels to angle outward. There's also one scene where you can see a much larger prototype or sketch model of the building from the Monkey King Warrior Mech set, with five stories and a bigger billboard on top. Other neat things you can see at some points include style guide pages and early animatics for the animated series. And even if you're not that interested in this theme in particular, this documentary offers a better look than ever before at many aspects of Lego's development process, including Lego's element archive used by designers as well as footage of the kid focus testing of the sets.
  19. Lyichir
    So with the new sets' instructions on Lego.com, there's some neat features that may not have been immediately obvious before. One of the biggest surprises for me was the fact that the big front wheels on the dump truck in the foundry actually rotate OPPOSITE of the direction it's driving. Instead of rolling along the ground they're actually geared to a drive wheel underneath the truck. This also means that when the wheels are linked up to the main foundry build both sets of wheels rotate inwards toward the foundry as it drives. EDIT: Realized that I wasn't understanding the gearing properly, the wheels rotate normally. Also, the Cloud Roadster (which is an amazing build, wow) has the main engine block built as one removable component. I built it on Stud.io according to the instructions and I'm really impressed by the shape of it from various angles. My sister also helped me add the stickers from the new sets to the document where I'm translating all the Chinese text. Most of the text in these new sets is duplicated from some of the others, except for some warning signs on the foundry that read "forbidden".
  20. Lyichir
    I doubt those molds are designed with solid colors in mind. Transparent and solid-colored Lego parts frequently use separate molds since the different materials have different properties when it comes to things like their clutch and how they cool when they come out of the mold.
  21. Lyichir
    Ooh, I don't think I'd even realized that the subway set had extra stickers like the Beach Buggy. Speaking of that, does anyone know if any of the four summer sets feature extra unused stickers like those? Or was that just something they were experimenting with in the winter wave?
  22. Lyichir
    The difference in the part count between the two is not huge and 80014 does seem like it could be feasibly be bigger than 80007—the two vehicles seem roughly comparable in size but 80007 has the additional cave entrance, Spider Queen, and jet board. Hard to directly compare with one of the sets not yet being released. I know that for me, personally, 80014 is a lot more attractive to me due to the increased variety of figs including one exclusive figure and two figures (Mo the cat and Pigsy in his chef attire) that are only available in one other set each. I'm planning to get 80014 mainly for the Spider Queen but it'll also allow me to skip the food truck set entirely (and if I were concerned about figs alone I could even skip the $180 HQ ship as well, though I think I like that ship too much on its own merits to skip). Conversely, there's not really any exclusive features of 80007—I'd easily have considered it one of the first wave sets that was easiest to pass on even before this second wave was revealed.
  23. Lyichir
    New Elementary recently reviewed the recolors in the Super Mario sets and there's certainly a few that I could see being attractive to castle builders. Most notably, there's a lot of interesting new recolors in Dark Orange and Tan (including wall panel elements), but there's certainly others that could be used in creative ways like the roller coaster cart in Reddish Brown and a wide assortment of more brightly colored parts.
  24. Lyichir
    Hm... I got it from this article but it's since been taken down. There are articles on other sites covering the same information, but most of those lack a specific reference to how many seasons so it's possible that the information in this article was misstated or unreliable? Hard to say...
  25. Lyichir
    I think it's one of these attached to one of these on the back.
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