Alexandrina

Those would both be new colours, right? I'm not opposed, but there are a lot of shades of blue already in production so I question the necessity when colours like dark yellow have never come into play.

The thing is, these parts are often going out of stock within an hour or so of someone reporting them being in stock (and in some places, I'm not sure they're in stock in the first place). People don't have time to check Bricks and Pieces every hour or so just in case, so there's a lot of luck involved in getting on at the right time. Lego really should be adding enough stock to at least last a day or so without running out.

If they do all their good ideas too early they'll have nothing left for future CMFs. I have no doubt a new Crusader will come eventually.

That's fair, but I reckon they're saving them for next time. Perhaps the success or otherwise of this year's medieval sets is going to inform what Lego do in the future - and so they want to focus on one faction now in case no more sets follow. If this leads to a full theme we'll probably get another faction to go with the Black Falcons.

Perhaps the likes of Bugs, Lola, Daffy, Sylvester, etc. will come with regular heads and overlay pieces like Chewbacca! Though I reckon that would be more likely if there was a Looney Tunes set rather than a CMF.

100%. Maybe it's controversial, but I actually hate exclusive torsos, especially in non-licensed sets where there's no need for it. The Black Falcon torsos are expensive enough to get now, when their set is brand new. How expensive will they become five years from now when there's no active production run? I always feel that minifig parts that are exclusive to big D2C sets are hard to come by on the aftermarket - there's not as many sold as with cheaper sets, and those that are sold are often sold to people who know what their Lego is worth - the kind of people who will more often sell the whole set than just the parts. You're unlikely to find the Blacksmith broken up in a £50 bin of assorted bricks ten years from now! I guess I'm thinking of all the beautiful torsos from sets in my Dark Ages/sets I couldn't afford when I was younger, that are now almost impossible for me to come by. I want lots of Black Falcons this year and next. It's possible that Lego are trying to work their way up to a full Castle theme. They've got the Blacksmith and the 3-in-1 this year, both with Black Falcons, so you can build your army nicely. Perhaps if they sell well enough, either next year or 2023 there'll be a full theme with more of the Black Falcons and maybe a group like the Wolfpack updated to go up against them.

I love your method of presenting this as an evolving project, so we can see how it improves - and I'm glad to see it's still getting work. You've got the makings of a cosy little hall there, and dare I say the dust even helps it out a bit? There's a sort of... agéd feel to a dust-covered room, Lego or otherwise. I look forward to seeing what you'll do with this next!

Not to mention, it's great fun at the end of the year to go through the previous year's thread and see just how comically wrong we all were, now that we have the actual sets to compare with. It's a bit like reading episode discussion threads on a forum, for a TV show you've already seen to the end - the baseless speculation is a fun matter of record!

Conversely, if we're not getting a full blown theme I would rather have the same faction in both sets than have two factions who each only come in a single expensive set. What's the point in having two factions for battling if you have to buy multiple copies of three figure sets or get lucky on Bricks & Pieces if you want armies of more than two apiece?

In fairness, Cho was new to the students pack last year, aside from a CMF which many people wouldn't have got (most people aren't like us, feeling the bags for the figure we want and brickllinking what we can't get). Hannah, obviously, is an exclusive. I think two new figures is a reasonable number to hope for.

It's possible that there could even be a minor variant in the torso, so it's still fitting perfectly with the faction aesthetic but the figures aren't all carbon copies of one another.

Please be a good torso...

Easy enough to stick in Higgs or Bole or someone. Even the female keeper from PS if they need the gender balance

Unfortunately I don't think this is the sort of set that will really ever sell well enough to be a viable option. All the completionists and many of the denizens of forums like this will probably buy it, maybe even multiple times - but many kids aren't going to want a Harry Potter set full of characters they don't know (especially if they're genuinely random figures rather than just really obscure characters) and the fleshie figures will limit the appeal to people who want figures for their yellowhead Castle, etc. displays. Doing the same set with Harry and his mates will sell far more copies.

We all understand that. You gave your opinion, others gave theirs. However, when you say stuff like: It's natural that people want to know more. I can't speak for others, but I personally haven't ever heard what you're saying, and I spend a lot of time in AFOL communities. But rather than corroborating what you're saying - which on the face of it is a rather strong indictment of Lego - you've chosen to take a break from the forum. You'll forgive me, therefore, if I'm not left convinced by your claims. But then, that's just my opinion.

To which I would offer a three point response: 1) I can't find specific reports for companies' sales figures (this is probably me being an idiot rather than the figures not being there) 2) Is there a comparison to merchandise based on real world space? If Star Wars merchandise is outperforming NASA merchandise by, say, a factor of ten, does it matter that it's in slight decline? 3) Star Wars merchandise sales apparently rose 70% last year; this to me suggests that the genre was not necessarily the problem so much as the widespread backlash against the Disney films. Star Trek, meanwhile, seems to have always been a merchandise graveyard so I wouldn't take its present sales figures as gospel (though incidentally I couldn't find any with a brief look)

Lego do have to strike a balance between sets looking good when they're all put together and when they're combined. As such, sets like the bathroom can be released such that they're compatible with other sets like the RoR, but the sets will be designed assuming they're the only set a customer owns. That was all I wanted to add - that the absence of a floor in the RoR set doesn't mean nothing can be added on top, since adding a floor is easily done for people who are combining the sets together. I suspect this will be the norm for slfuture sets - smaller rooms without solid floors so as to make better play sets, but designed so that they're compatible with others if need be

I'm sure Lego don't mind too much if their sales are stagnating at five times their level in the early 2000s

It's easy enough to add a floor in if you want it for a display. A floor for the RoR would look weird on the standalone set, since there's barely any interior

I don't really think AFOL events are ever going to be what makes or breaks Lego as a company. They're doing just fine in areas where there are not and have never been events, and what is going to be bigger for them is their presence in shops and TV advertising, as well as the brand recognition they have from sixty years making bricks. That won't go away just because they're making less inventive sets.

Slightly detouring from the core point, but I would love a subtheme based on the Arthurian legend (or even better, the Marcher struggles that inspired it). Perhaps I'm biased by the fact that my own hometown was at its peak relevance at this point in history (the only battle fought there was a little later than Arthur, between the Welsh kingdoms and Offa of Mercia, but an Arthurian aesthetic would be similar). Having said that, Lego would probably have greater joy transplanting the cast of the legend into their sets with new names. The stories aren't consistent, and having their's own Arthur-adjacent theme would allow them to stick to the most simple story without the inevitable glut of people upset because the sets don't represent the version of the legend they grew up on. Most of the Knights of the Round Table aren't embedded into the public consciousness on their own anyway (yes, Lancelot is famous - who else is there?) I'll also admit that my mind, giddy in thoughts of an Arthurian-esque theme set close to my home, started imagining a set featuring a battle at Offa's Dyke, before it occurred to me that the word has another meaning Lego are advised to steer well clear of!

I would be wary of assuming that your experience is universal to kids. I can just as easily bring up the kids I know, who love Star Wars and the ilk and don't care a jot for space shuttles and whatnot. Unfortunately without the evidence borne by an actual sci-fi theme, it's just hypotheticals.

I always understood it to be that Lego funded the series as a vehicle for the toy line. It's not dissimilar to Ninjago really, except live action and a failure

As someone who didn't get her hands on the 2009 version but who has the 2020 version, I can definitely vouch for it being a good buy for people like me. When you put the two side by side as in your picture you can definitely see the size difference, but when you've got the 2020 set and no comparison point, it doesn't look especially minuscule. Great review, very comprehensive!

This I cannot disagree with. The Skull Sorceror's Dungeon is still the only Ninjago set I've deliberately sought out and bought (though I also have a few from bulk buys, newspaper promotions, etc.) I guess I was far from a typical kid! When I was at the height of my childhood collecting, I wanted parts and figures for films. That meant anything I could use as an army - clone troopers, Toy Story green army men, knights - I wanted in abundance. Things that didn't fit in my films were useless to me, even though 2021 me hates childhood me's idiocy in picking sets (why did I only ever get the one Lord of the Rings set?) Of course, I was doing this at the height of the YouTube clones vs. droids brickfilms phase, when people like Forrestfire and Pizzamovies were putting out monthly battles with hundreds of clone troopers, which only fuelled my repetition over variety methodology. Even today, I rarely keep something on display for a long time. I'll build a set, keep it out for a few months, then cycle it into my miscellaneous parts collection, maybe keeping out a cool minifigure for a bit longer (which doesn't explain why I have the Republic Fighter Tank with Aayla Secura still built and on display about four years after I got it, but I digress...) I also can't really relate to most in the sense that I absolutely cannot start watching a TV series in the middle of its run. If I see something on that vaguely interests me, I'll immediately change the channel and look for the first episode to watch through in order. That said, I don't think Castle and Ninjago are similar in this respect. Castle - by its very nature as a principally-knights-based theme with distinct factions in every run - is the sort of theme that encourages army building much more than most. It also rarely if ever tells you who the "bad guys" are of the current factions, that's up to the kids to decide in their play. Not to say that the same can't be achieved with a TV series, but it's something that's very hard to pull off, and I'm not sure a toy-tie-in kids' show is likely to have the nuance to do it well. That eases my concerns considerably - if the sets are available in some form, it doesn't matter if they're not brick-for-brick the same as the originals. I didn't realise Lego did that for in-house themes like Ninjago!