TeriXeri

There are no Castle or Pirate themes right now.

Just been looking at some lifespans of the later Castle / Pirate themes : 2015 Pirates just came and went, which seemed very quick, they were only sold for about 8-9 months on LEGO.com. I don't know if the Ninjago 2016 Skybound wave had any effect on that, but those sets were on LEGO.com twice as long. Also 8 months is just shockingly short lifespan compared to the 2009 Pirate wave which was sold for nearly 2 years in the US. (based on brickset lego.com info) 2011 Castle wave also seemed to have a very short lifespan on Lego.com 6-7 months , they retired before 2012. In 2012 Lord of the Rings sets launched , and the large Kingdoms Joust single set for Castle. But then for 2013, there's both Castle and Lord of the Rings again, as well as The Hobbit sets, so maybe 2013 Castle got bad sales due to the competition. After 2014 Hobbit sets were retired, we got 2015 Elves, and 2016 Nexo Knights, which in term now both retired after 2018.

Well, technically that's what LEGO did for the more recent themes, Chima, Elves, Nexo Knights, I don't see those as "Failures", but I can also understand the heavy cost put in multiple fronts to keep those themes running. Nexo Knights eventually was cut short due to the TV show not getting another season. Lots of merchandise, books, magazines and such beside just LEGO sets. But I don't like the way LEGO is going with the LEGO City Adventures TV show, restricting it to Nickelodeon customers/television but I have discussed that on previous pages, and City is pretty much evergreen anyway.

Playmobil even has 2 different Castle themes going on at the same time. Knight / Novelmore. And Pirates. LEGO has none of the sort right now. And also more focus on animals sold in seperate sets, something I never seen LEGO do.

Wish I could help , but only being once to a LEGO Store, doesn't give any view of changes :( I did see very few special parts the time I did go (early January), most of the space was taken up by skis, and it seemed right then they had just added a ton of rats as it was right at the time they started selling Chinese New Year sets. Maybe they had taken most parts out as there were no cats or dogs at all, and just rats.

Well, for myself, the late 90s certainly weren't the golden age, while I still had some Town Junior sets, I did buy less and less LEGO eventually settled into a Dark Age after 2001. And I know there were a lot of sets and themes even in 2001/2002 still , via sites like Brickset, but my personal experience was that there certainly was a lot less advertisements. LEGO was going through a dark age/reform itself as it spent too much budget, so the cut back on advertising makes some sense but it didn't keep me in LEGO over video games which with internet, online features, multiplayer was rapidly developing at the time, and franchises like Pokemon appeared very popular. Now I don't have stats/numbers, just personal experiences.

Maybe Theme names are off-limits. Classic is a line of sets, and so is IDEAS. And I think that's really silly for obvious cases of no licensed submissions, almost sounds like Algorithm of bots that, in similar situations, used to badly flag YouTube videos wrongly as well.

I just hope Creator and IDEAS Pirates sets sell well enough for more of them. And the Blacksmith shop as well but that's likely not for 2020 or at the very end of the year at minimum. As for Space, after 2019 City and LEGO Movie 2, I don't expect new Space sets for a while. I do think City Space will stay on shelves this year, but LEGO Movie 2 sets got even 40% off from LEGO themselves. But at least it looked like Benny's Squad was very popular so hopefully LEGO got the message.

We used to have the 1980 7710 Push Train (now incomplete due to missing/broken parts), but €99 GWP is like way too high to be "nostalgic" for this.

I actually saw Playmobil figures for sale in my supermarket last week, which doesn't even usually sell toys, and guess what, the figures were 2 different pirates and a knight. And they weren't Blind bags either.

Agree, I do somewhat like the Dino but that truck is just meh, the brick-shaped shooter part has potential in other themes however.

That's a nice Castle for sure, compact, yet very detailed and great variation of parts/figures.

That's a nice Castle for sure, compact, yet very detailed and great variation of parts/figures.

3-in-1 Creator Dinosaur from 2017 been a big exception but because it's Creator it's often overlooked

I think that sadly might be true, kids are exposed to so much more licensed media nowadays, either via TV/series/movies, Video games or general mass advertisements. I grew up with LEGO before the internet, even when Star Wars original Trilogy movies are older, it was just a movie like anything else. Europe had many of it's own franchises and countries had their own kids shows and characters, before television "commercialized" , during the 90s there was a big rise of imported cartoons from the US/Japan etc, and television got a lot more commerical channels. In the last decade or so City, Creator, Friends, Ninjago are the current long-lasting Core of in-house, and I just hope that "pillar" isn't showing weaknesses yet.

What's next ? Venom Shark vs Spider-Submarine? I know the T-Rex was a thing in the comics. But, just saying, that there are Spider-Man villains out there, that never made by LEGO yet, like Lizard.

Indeed a nice idea, just personally don't like the use of fleshies in IDEAS where it's not licensed.

Yes that is noticeable, it's not like they are the only active organization right now, and even planned future american manned space travel is outsourced to Space X or Boeing now. I don't see the big hype about NASA anymore, maybe in a historic sense but not in a current-day one, at least for manned missions, after the Space Shuttle retired. I know SLS is in development for beyond earth, and LEGO's 2019 City Space rocket kind of seemed to based on that, so we'll see where that goes. But replacing Classic Space with NASA would be sad.

Well, there's only 1 episode on there for City Adventures anyway. I can't watch Episode 2-10 either unless I actually go watch Nickelodeon on Television. And it seems they also split each episode in 2 seperate 11 minute parts and they broadcast them in no particular order, a bit annoying to eventually wanting to see them all. I think they do communicate but use that Ambassador Network place as a central spot for select people to keep it manageable, just like Game Developers sometimes invite certain people for feedback (I have been selected myself for feedback on a game a couple years ago) There's a fair discussion on the exact same subject (Historic Themes) here : It's from 2018, but still shows entirely different people that aren't active on Eurobricks. https://forum.brickset.com/discussion/28993/are-lego-historical-themes-a-thing-of-the-past I still think Eurobricks is a much better set-up forum, but still shows there are multiple seperate groups within the LEGO community. I don't use the brickset forum myself but do comment at their articles.

Nexo Knights TV show was free to watch, also on youtube. Just because a theme sells Books, Audiobooks, DVDs also doesn't mean it's a mistake, Ninjago, Friends, Elves, Chima had those as well. But there are exceptions, like the 2019 LEGO City Adventures TV show, I only can see Episode 1 on Youtube, the rest seems to be Nickelodeon exclusive.

I'd say Ironhook lost more, like his uniform and epaulets.

Interesting part of the Venomsaur set is the new Missile Shooter being an actual brick instead of the old Technic version, makes it very useful piece for System-based themes.

Probably won't see pictures till at least April, if last year is similar. City / Creator pictures came out 3rd week of April in 2019.

I'd expect them around April, at least official pictures, at the end of that month.

Stickered headlights are the weakest point of the set to me. Venom T-Rex with just Figures, and maybe some terrain to use webs on or destroy would've been better. 2019/2020 has so many Spider-Man vehicles, it's getting a bit silly. Batman vehicles are somewhat imaginable, but the cartoons / movies of Spider-Man I grew up with certainly didn't have all those Spider-Vehicles.