Lyichir

It's often a tough issue with releasing a main villain early on. Narratively, it makes sense to "build up" to a major villain so that they are released as the story reaches a major climax (and so that people don't feel like their collections have all the "essentials" early on and feel no need to continue purchasing sets for increasingly obscure characters). Of course, the examples you list could not be more different. Sauron and the Witch King were part of an established story that had already wrapped upon the Lego theme's production, and likely only went unreleased because of disappointing sales. Whereas Vortech and Lady E were essentially designed as digital-only antagonists (as were most of the Hidden Side villains, to be honest) and might never have made their way into sets even if Lego Dimensions and Hidden Side had each continued for a third year. I feel the frustration of not having a physical antagonist to play with (as a constraction fan, I found both the viral antagonists for the Roboriders theme and the Morbuzakh plant from the 2004 Bionicle story underwhelming). But for Hidden Side, at least, I feel like Nehmaar Reem feels more dramatic and imposing than Lady E ever did anyway, even if his introduction did sort of feel like it came out of left field. Regarding the lack of a haunted house, I feel like that also might have just been a casualty of this theme's distinct take on hauntings. Haunted houses are often portrayed as abandoned, and thus not the most likely to have civilian characters to possess and/or rescue. I feel like the Mystery Castle is really this theme's unique take on that subject—it's just a huge, castle-like manor rather than a more modest single-family home.

It's a good question... if they come out later I personally won't mind (it will make the August store trip I'm planning easier since I'll be able to focus on the Super Mario sets and sets in other themes that are already out like Monkie Kid), but I get how disappointing it would be for people who are only waiting on Ninjago or Hidden Side if they don't debut until September or later.

I don't think this is really all that big a concern. Companies partner with two or more of the major three video game hardware producers all the time—doing so is why we can even have "multiplatform" games ported to all the major systems. In fact, Lego already has a longstanding license with a Microsoft-owned developer, that being their partnership with Mojang for the Minecraft theme. Bigger concerns would be content and brand fit—even now that they're branching out into more adult-focused sets I think Lego is still a long way from licensing a gory, M-rated game like The Last of Us or God of War any time soon. A franchise like Spyro or Crash Bandicoot (that have the same sort of crossover appeal to both kids and nostalgic adults as Mario does) would seem like things Lego would be more likely to take on.

This is only sort of tangentially related to the sets, but apparently Flying Bark Studios, the animation studio behind the Monkie Kid TV series, has been contracted for two additional seasons of the show (presumably on top of the "pilot" that has already aired). Bodes well for the theme performing well at launch and sticking around for at least another year.

Not that you aren't correct that it would be amazing to see that part in more colors (along with the similarly angled 6x4 left and right wedge plates), but isn't it also available in Medium Azure? From one of the Speed Champions sets?

Lego usually has more than one copy of each part mold, especially for more common parts. So when a minor revision is made to a part, it would be rather expensive to replace every mold for that part at once. Instead, new molds are often "phased in" gradually as each older mold wears out and needs replacing.

No. "Big Bang" themes are not necessarily designed to last forever. They're designed to make a big impact at launch, coast on that for a couple years, and once their popularity wanes, be replaced with something new. Ninjago's massive success is the exception, not the norm. Keep in mind that it was originally going to end and be replaced after two and a half years worth of sets—perhaps not coincidentally, the exact same lifespan that Chima and Nexo Knights ended up getting. Also, on a personal level... I've enjoyed pretty much every "big bang" theme Lego has done (though obviously I've loved some like Elves more than others like Chima). So I see no reason why they should stop using a strategy that has worked so well and resulted in so many amazing themes over the past decade.

I have no idea what you mean by "without a proper ending". The sets this year build up to what seems like a climax (much like Nexo Knights did), but unlike the Nexo Knights TV series, there's a very good chance that the webisodes for Hidden Side WILL continue through the rest of the year to cover the remainder of the sets and finish out this year's story (much like Elves in its respective final year). Don't forget that ten years ago it was COMMON for themes to last for one or two years at most. Atlantis lasted a year and a half. Power Miners lasted a year and a half. Space Police lasted a year and a half. And others like Monster Fighters and Alien Conquest and Dino each ran for only a single wave. Ninjago was exceptional in that it was extended BEYOND two and a half years (the same exact lifespan Nexo and Chima ended up getting overall). There's really been no noteworthy decline in the length of Lego themes, it's just that Ninjago has lasted so incredibly long that the lifespans for other themes end up feeling short by comparison.

Personally, I don't care (and never have cared) that figs like the NRG/Airjitzu/Spinjitzu Burst Ninja variants didn't look like their on-screen appearance, apart from if anything wishing the on-screen versions closer resembled the set ones. Those spinner-exclusive fig variants have just generally been such good designs that I don't care whether or not they technically appeared as such in the show. After all, often the visual representations of those sorts of powers in the show rely on translucency or dynamic energy effects that would not be well-suited to a plastic minifigure design, so the latter often opts instead for more dynamic color schemes (including metallic prints) to achieve a similar level of visual flair.

I dunno, I think the transparent dish on the back of Mario (3x3 I think?) might be meant to "automatically" lift him over smaller obstacles (this would explain why some of the background objects like bushes are placed one plate forward in the foreground where he can interact with them like the enemies, pipes, and "ground"). Of course it could be both, with the swinging arm for Mario automatically lifting him over those smaller obstacles while you can also control it to jump him up to higher platforms.

Looks like just ordinary click hinges/finger hinges attached to some sort of bracket to me. I don't think it's new.

I don't think it's quite that simple. AFAIK it's more a case where the sets and show are made side-by-side. That is to say, the rough story outline comes first (with input from both the set designers and brand team at Lego as well as the writing team for the show), then the sets get designed, then the show is written based on those. But the sets aren't necessarily always finalized by the time the show is written. This is one of the advantages of the not-quite-toy-accurate aesthetic for vehicles and settings in the show, since sometimes the writers and animators might be working from a slightly earlier prototype of the set designs than what ends up on shelves.

I doubt they'd reuse any new printed parts from Ninjago within Hidden Side in the same wave. And as for molds, only the Skreemer (the ghost headgear piece) and the old spider (which has largely been replaced with the newer, more realistic one) have yet to appear in Hidden Side. I think if anything it might be more worth asking the opposite—whether remakes of Ninjago's ghost villains could maybe make use of some of the newer molds from Hidden Side, such as the ghostly accessory pack from this year.

Huh, I hadn't considered the possibility of making the boss ghosts mid-sized like Axl. That could potentially work really well, even if some of them shared a torso mold—though there are several who would decidedly need their own discrete torso molds or at the very least connection points on their back to build onto. It's times like this I wish I were more skilled with 3D modeling software... I'd love to draft up some more "toyetic" designs that could work for some of those characters.

I hadn't considered that. I suppose it'd be possible, but I'm not too bothered by the plain undersides. Also, lol at the Cloud Roadster idea. That might be a little TOO over the top even for me. The jet on its own works well enough—it can even fit the bike on the jet where it normally mounts, though it's a little silly-looking and I prefer not to push the weight limit of the joints more than I have to. As it is I just had to put the jet and mech back together after my sister accidentally knocked it over with the jet on its back, so I'm opting to no longer have them attached together when I'm not on hand to fix it if any of the joints should give out or it gets knocked over again.

Something I was working on today! I'd seen someone on Facebook with the idea but it took me a while to figure out a way to do it I was happy with. My goal was to require minimal modification but to connect securely (currently the jet just rests on it with gravity but if you wanted it more swooshable you could swap the blue axle-pins for grey pins or black friction pins).

For official combination models, no. Lego includes extras of small parts due to the very real possibility that smaller parts in a set might accidentally be omitted without tripping a weight check that verifies the completeness of each set that is produced. As such, the inventoried parts (not including extras) are the only ones that they can truly guarantee that a given copy of the set will include. But for a fan creation... it's up to you. As long as it's not for a contest or challenge that specifically dictates that extra parts are not allowed to be used, it's up to your own personal discretion. Like with Lego's official combination models, you may individually choose not to use extra parts if the intention is for other fans with the set to be able to build it, but ultimately like with most MOCs the only real rules are the ones you set for yourself.

To be perfectly honest, I don't know if the transparent parts would be the biggest barrier... after all, the smaller physical ghosts we got only had two transparent parts (the heads and the coinjected ghost trails). But that latter component would probably pose a bigger barrier for physical bigfig ghosts, since coinjected parts even in smaller sizes tend to be expensive. And most of the boss ghosts have very different torso and head designs... best case scenario, Lego could create a standard coinjected "lower torso" for the bigfig ghosts to share and mold the upper torso separately, as they have with many ordinary bigfigs ranging from Maui to Gorilla Grodd to Dogshank... but even then the cost of that coinjected lower torso mold plus an upper body mold for each ghost would add up tremendously. That's a part of why I'm so impressed with the large Nehmar Reem figure. While he's not a typical bigfig, his head shows potential for how Lego might be able to do brick-built ghosts at a bigfig scale. A brick built head and torso and standard bigfig arms and hands could go a long way for many of them, though the ghostly tails would still be an issue... I'm not entirely sure how that could be done effectively at a bigfig scale without a dedicated new component. Of course, this is all conjectural and not entirely likely. The reality is that the boss ghosts in the app are able to be as widely varied as they are in part BECAUSE they were likely designed without the challenges of physical production in mind. If they had been designed with the intention of being available in the sets physically, chances are the vast majority of them if not all of them would have been designed as standard minifigures, since bigfigs tend to inflate the cost of any set they come in substantially. So as much as we may wish we had gotten those ghosts as figures (and believe me, I agree it would have been cool as heck), that sort of possibility was likely never in the cards in the first place.

Nah, they appear together in a scene near the end. We just... haven't gotten him yet. Which is weird (since I would have expected him to come in this wave), but hopefully he'll appear in a set before long. Personally I don't mind that the bull vehicles look similar; it helps to tie them together as a faction. They still have pretty distinct designs, just like how various construction equipment in the City theme can look distinct even while sharing similar vehicular builds and yellow color schemes. Of course, I never really planned on getting all of them in the first place. It is nice that the Foundry allows you to get all three members of the Iron Bull Family, especially for people who might've sat out the first wave and want to catch up on the villains from those sets.

I think there's a lot more to China than temples... not to say we couldn't ever get one, but saying that because the theme is based on China there'll have to be a temple is like saying that because Hidden Side is based on America there has to be a church.

Yeah, it's disappointing that character variants have been treated a little unevenly this year. Jack got a Hidden Side variant. Parker got a wetsuit. I also kind of wish J.B. had gotten a new hairpiece with the goggles down over her eyes (like how Jack got the reversed ballcap and Parker got a headphones version this year). Maybe next year...

I suppose, but that's only if you don't take into account the non-vehicle components of sets like the White Dragon Horse Bike, Inferno Truck, and Monkey King Warrior Mech (all three of which are much more substantial than the side builds you'd typically get with a vehicle in a theme like Ninjago).

Do they? We really haven't had any sets like Sandy's Speedboat, and the Cloud Roadster, while sticking to a similar aesthetic as the Cloud Jet, is very much its own thing. Even the Foundry is very much different from the smaller truck, tank, and outpost from the earlier sets... it's more like a full-fledged mobile fortress like the Fortrex from Nexo Knights. On that note, this theme isn't much bigger than Nexo Knights itself was in its debut year, and arguably offers a wider range of different subject matter.

One idea I've had for one that I'd really like for multiple reasons would be a souped up garbage truck, with a cell/storage tank for captured ghosts in the back. Ideally with a Junkbot-inspired robot assistant for J.B. like the TeeVee in the fire truck set!

I think the issue is that different people like different things. For me the Fire Stone Mech is pretty much a must-get—despite not tying in much to the board game aspect, it's a fantastic-looking mech set on its own terms, and the way it blends the aesthetics of two separate elements is really cool to me. The goal of a Ninjago wave generally isn't to encourage fans to collect the full wave of sets (which really only a small percentage of fans would ever even have the means to do), but rather to have something for every sort of fan so that they can pick and choose which sets they like best without feeling left out. With that in mind, one fan's "filler" might be another fan's favorite part of the wave.