Alexandrina

Fantastic work. Very detailed! I love your decision to use sideways plates rather than bricks for parts of the wall, to give it all a bit more texture.

The thing is, if you have a theme set in the Victorian era, you're going to have: No castles No knights in armour - the sword might still have been in use by this period, but guns were more common and redcoats had replaced knights No siege towers/crossbow carts since these had been phased out An increasing tendency towards technology depending on exactly when in the era you're going for, as the Industrial Revolution gathers pace Would this make an interesting theme? 100%. But to me that's playing so fast and loose with the fundamentals of what Castle is that it's hard to argue that such a theme would still be Castle. I'm interested to know what exactly defines the Castle theme in your eyes.

The thing is, Napoleonic era hews very close to pirates. There's a brilliant painting of the Gloucesters at Quatre-Bras, a few days before Waterloo - the uniforms of those soldiers are very similar to the redcoat uniforms. These redcoats or something similar were used rihht through the nineteenth century (I don't know enough about the French armies in this period to know what uniform they wore).

I won't go for the gotcha by pointing out that Lego did once produce a church, since that was decades ago and their philosophy has changed since then. It's just a curiosity now. However, I mainly used the cathedral as an example because it's a landmark I am personally familiar with but which would make no sense for Lego to produce - religious or not - because most of the world has never heard of it.

That looks worse than the 2002 Dobby!

I can't wait see how a theme set in the Victorian era would have castles in it. They were pretty much all disused by then.

I'll give that a go then.

What platform would it be in the UK? We don't get Hulu here.

I suspected that might be the case - but having never been to Australia I didn't want to make the assumption! I suspect you'll get more Asian sets in the coming years. Lego are pushing hard in the Chinese market, which will no doubt influence the sort of sets they produce.

Gothic Victorian would appeal to me too, but I wouldn't call it Castle.

It's possible I suppose. I wouldn't get your hopes up for more June sets, though - I suspect our assumptions were correct and the other sets are coming in August after all.

Surely one of Guyon and Falconfan would have said something if there was no August wave at all?

The same is true of the major markets, though, beyond where the local architecture is similar to the generic style. I live in the UK - one of the best-represented countries in terms of having sets - but there's very few that actually look like anything that exists near me. The landmarks are all London-based or similar, but even the architecture seems more London than the rest of the country. I'd love to see a set in the style of my local cathedral, but I'm not aware of anything similar. It comes down to getting the best profit. There's a lot of customers in North America and Western Europe, so the generic styles are similar to what those consumers recognise, and specific landmarks need to be recognisable enough that people all around the world will be interested in buying it. There are obvious gaps around the world - why there's never been a Sphinx set, or Chichen Itza, I don't know. But while I personally would be buying a Hereford Cathedral set on the day it came out (to use an example I'm familiar with) most people would not consider it worth spending money on.

I retract the August part of my comment, then! Seems I was mistaken!

Does any theme really need that many races? I have a decently-big interest in fantasy as a genre and I'm not entirely sure what all of those are. The general public will be even less so. Dwarves and elves are well-known (and presumably halflings are Hobbits, in which case they'll have decent cultural penetration) but minotaurs are in the public eye indelibly linked to ancient Crete and hence would look out of place in a medieval setting. Equally vampires are linked to Dracula and the Gothic Victorian literary genre, so would also feel out of place in a medieval setting. Demons? Too controversial. No way Lego ever have an in-house theme with a faction called "demons". Mer-people? How are they interacting with other races? In a medieval setting, there's not going to be much deep-sea diving, so either you have to contrive a way for them to interact or they have no impact on the main storyline - and in that case, just make them a separate theme. Imps bring to mind Lincoln Cathedral more than any fantasy characters. Wererats are a term I've never come across before, so the general public's got no chance - and while the name is descriptive enough for me to imagine, I have no idea what the difference is between dragon men and draconians (I presume you don't mean the alien race from Doctor Who), and how is that difference going to be conveyed in Lego form? The problem a lot of people (myself included) are having with this is that we're coming at it from adult lenses - with particular focus on what we would like to see. There's a lot of discussion on having loads of races - but no suggestion of how they could be incorporated into a storyline. If it wasn't based on a story, it would be easy: stick cool-looking figures in the sets, and let the kids figure out how they all relate to one another. But with a story, it's harder. Looking at the episode guide for Ninjago, the average season seems to have sixteen episodes, with a runtime of eleven minutes each. (I'm assuming that a theoretical new TV series would follow the current format, rather than going back to a format Ninjago dropped two years ago). Let's cut thirty seconds an episode for titles and credits, leaving us with 168 minutes of content in a season - and sets in the initial run will be based on the first season, since Lego are neither going to spoil future developments in their own IP nor commit to something which they have no idea if it will be profitable or not. Now, Episode 1 will likely be devoted to introducing the main characters, probably with a minor obstacle for them to overcome and a mystery hook at the end so people come back next week. I'm actually writing a brickfilm series right now, and eleven pages into Episode 1 - which is where the episode would cut off in a Ninjago-length episode - I've just reached the first wrinkle. To achieve this, I've delayed the introduction of half of the main cast and most of the factions until later episodes, and two of the main characters who have appeared get only fleeting introductions at this point. My main cast as demonstrated in the first eleven pages consists of five main characters - Lego will probably go a similar route. So what happens next? Personally speaking, if I was in charge of planning a Lego Castle series, I'd split the cast up. Episode 1 is introduction, Episode 2 is the big problem that the series has to solve - and at the end of Episode 2 the main cast are in two separate groups. This allows you more flexibility in storytelling. You can by default have two storylines, and thus three factions (if we're counting the main characters' faction as distinct from anybody they interact with) in every episode. For some episodes, one faction might not appear. The balance over sixteen episodes would probably be something along the lines of ten episodes featuring all the main characters (including two at the start when they're all together and one at the end for resolution of the series arc) and three episodes devoted to each group. When splitting the storylines, you'd have to be aware that you've got five minutes per storyline - so in practice you'd get a lot of two-parters or more split stories. I'd be surprised if more than five factions could be properly introduced in one season. Maybe you'd have one or two more as minor roles, but these are also the sorts of roles that rarely get turned into minifigures. Over time you could definitely get loads of factions - after all, other than the main characters, no faction needs to appear all the time. But I'm wary of people listing off two dozen niche fantasy races and (over time) people getting excited about the prospect of this happening, when in reality you'd be looking at at least seven or eight seasons before you could properly introduce all the factions you've listed thee.

Am I right in thinking that the Marvel leaks are for their August sets? If so, is it any wonder that the theme discussing sets five months from now has more pages of discussion than the theme discussing sets three months from now? There's also a Marvel D2C this year; Harry Potter had that last year with Diagon Alley, and last year's thread was a bona fide behemoth. I wouldn't worry about the amount of discussion on the Harry Potter thread this year. I don't think Lego are making their decisions on next year's themes based on how many pages of discussion the Eurobricks thread generates, but even if for some reason they were Harry Potter is doing very well. Imagine being a Minecraft fan trying to discuss this year's sets!

I don't think I ever even saw the Animaniacs, they were before my time altogether. Growing up, there was normally a half-hour Looney Tunes on every day, but 90% of the time it seemed to be Bugs, Daffy or Sylvester, and maybe a Roadrunner excerpt. Half of the characters I know more from the Boomerang idents than from actually watching Looney Tunes!

Very sleek, I like it! Is the front supposed to resemble a face, or is that an unintentional bonus?

It's been nearly a quarter century since Lola was introduced, and I presume (though I don't know, since Baby Looney Tunes is my own most recent experience) that she continues to feature in Looney Tunes material. For today's kids, the target audience, whether or not she was around in the Golden Era is likely immaterial.

The fact that you have notes on the location of rooms within Hogwarts makes you a hero in my book!

It might well be. I'm of an age where Baby Looney Tunes was on TV as much as if not more than classic Looney Tunes - and it was an ensemble, where classic Looney Tunes you'd often not see some characters. So for me, Lola is one of the core Looney Tunes.

There's a couple of us active! It's just one group of members, like how Fellows are green.

I'm a Lady, that's all.

Okay, these sets are lackluster for me. Happy?

I'm well aware. The original point was a user saying that they'd expected the Chamber to be the interior to the Long Gallery (before the sets were known) and I was addressing why that was never likely to happen imo