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The three new leaked Pokemon playsets actually look pretty good to me. They're fun, cute, and recognizable, and the stylistic choice of turning spheres into rounded cubes is consistent and understandable. The problem is that they'll all have the Smart Tax even without having the Smart Brick, like the Star Wars sets do. If these were priced consistently with their parts count, they wouldn't be bad at all. Edit - Geodude, Jigglypugg, Cubone, and Gengar are pretty good. Charmander is awful.

My ratings - all projects not mentioned below are "Not For Me". I was going to rate the Pirate Galleon Revenant and the Royal Sovereign Treasure Galleon as "Love It" until I saw the Armada Galleon Esperanza. The Revenant and the Royal Sovereign are recycled from previous BDP rounds, but Esperanza is new for this round, is by the maker of the Privateer Frigate Fortuna, and is more historically accurate than Revenant or Royal Sovereign. I'm looking forward to pre-ordering Coconut Cape and Hot Air Balloon next month. $210 and $80 are about what I'd expect to pay for those sets as good prices if they were made through the usual Lego process, so it's a little disappointing that they aren't lower through BDP, but they're still very reasonable prices for those two. Like it: Flame Monster https://www.bricklink.com/v3/designer-program/series-11/4408/Flame-Monster Triplane Desert Adventure https://www.bricklink.com/v3/designer-program/series-11/4738/Triplane-Desert-Adventure Galaxy Starship Carrier https://www.bricklink.com/v3/designer-program/series-11/4943/Galaxy-Starship-Carrier Space Cruiser and Mobile Lab https://www.bricklink.com/v3/designer-program/series-11/4624/Space-Cruiser-and-Mobile-Lab Fishing Boat https://www.bricklink.com/v3/designer-program/series-11/4706/Fishing-Boat Shipwreck Scavengers https://www.bricklink.com/v3/designer-program/series-11/4839/Shipwreck-Scavengers Medieval Peasant Hut https://www.bricklink.com/v3/designer-program/series-11/4841/Medieval-Peasant-Hut Compact Road Fun https://www.bricklink.com/v3/designer-program/series-11/4964/Compact-Road-Fun Telehandler https://www.bricklink.com/v3/designer-program/series-11/4888/Telehandler Space Port Satellite Team with Drone Shuttle https://www.bricklink.com/v3/designer-program/series-11/4833/Space-Port-–-Satellite-Team-with-Drone-Shuttle Royal Guards Fortress https://www.bricklink.com/v3/designer-program/series-11/4615/Royal-Guards-Fortress Exoplanet Research Cruiser https://www.bricklink.com/v3/designer-program/series-11/5016/Exoplanet-Research-Cruiser Police Hybrid Supercar 1:10 Scale https://www.bricklink.com/v3/designer-program/series-11/4397/Police-Hybrid-Supercar-1:10-Scale Black Rock Castle https://www.bricklink.com/v3/designer-program/series-11/4614/Black-Rock-Castle Pirate Galleon Revenant https://www.bricklink.com/v3/designer-program/series-11/4854/Pirate-Galleon-Revenant Royal Sovereign Treasure Galleon https://www.bricklink.com/v3/designer-program/series-11/4488/Royal-Sovereign---Treasure-Galleon Love it: Golden Age Aviation https://www.bricklink.com/v3/designer-program/series-11/4702/Golden-Age-Aviation Spaceship Delivery https://www.bricklink.com/v3/designer-program/series-11/4793/Spaceship-Delivery Vintage Biplane https://www.bricklink.com/v3/designer-program/series-11/4875/Vintage-Biplane All Terrain Hybrid Racer EVO https://www.bricklink.com/v3/designer-program/series-11/4886/All-Terrain-Hybrid-Racer-EVO Merchants Wharf Cog and Crane https://www.bricklink.com/v3/designer-program/series-11/5043/Merchant's-Wharf:-Cog-&-Crane Samurai Castle https://www.bricklink.com/v3/designer-program/series-11/4834/Samurai-Castle Japanese Castle https://www.bricklink.com/v3/designer-program/series-11/4865/Japanese-Castle Armada Galleon Esperanza https://www.bricklink.com/v3/designer-program/series-11/5033/Armada-Galleon-Esperanza

Most of the conversation has been in this thread:

The price, parts count, and minifig count of Coconut Cape is very similar to the Eldorado Fortress. I'm looking forward to getting it as the "Eldorado Fortress" to go with the Fortuna. I like it quite a bit better than the actual Eldorado Fortress set. It's a cleaner build, it's more modular so it's easier to build and rebuild, and it's not hampered by the need to brick-build an old raised baseplate.

Very good. A beautiful model of a beautiful ship. Looking forward to more pictures as soon as you're able to post them.

The approach they're taking to trains this year is interesting: sell just the trains without motors or track loops at a lower price point, then sell motors and track separately. I like it, but I don't know how accessible the tracks and motors are right now and I don't know how easy they're going to be to integrate. But in principle, this is a good way to broaden the audience for train sets as it lowers the barrier to entry without degrading the build.

Ouch, that's embarassing.

What's not iconic about the shape of a simple bicycle?

I'm going to stay out of the licensed/unlicensed debate this time, but I'd just like to comment and say that PoBB was fantastic value. It had over 2500 pieces and 10 minifigs for $200, and they were big pieces: one lower bow segment, one upper bow segment, four center hull segments, three mast parts, a rowboat, a shark, six big fabric sails, two big pirate flags, four big rigging shrouds, lots of big curved tan round bricks for sand, enough big aqua-blue plates and wedge plates for a roughly 32x64 base area, three firing cannons ... PoBB didn't have the big raised baseplate of the original submission, but it was still incredibly good value for money, and a heck of a lot better value than anything else at the $200-$250 price range since then. Edit - eight true minifigures, two skeletons, and the upper half of a minifig in the figurehead

I bought the Force Burner Snowspeeder, with all pieces and minifigs but without box or accessories, at Bricks & Minifigs today for $25. The RRP of $55 is highway robbery, but $25 is pretty good. With the black/trans-yellow windscreen, the bright yellow and red colors up front, the speeder bike clipped in the back/bottom, and the overall disregard for canon in its shape, colors, and features, it does feel in-hand more like in-house Lego Space than like licensed Lego Star Wars. I just need to pull a couple of Blacktron minifigs out of storage to fly it.

I didn't like the Star Wars dioramas because they were about 2-4 times the price a playset for the same scene ought to have been, but if playsets aren't an option for LotR I would welcome dioramas as a relatively inexpensive way to get characters in relatively small scenes. Well, small compared to Rivendell, Barad-dur, Bag End, and Minas Tirith, anyway.

I doubt it. That sounds like the false, alarmist rumor that the first Stranger Things set was going to be canceled as punishment for it leaking early. On the other hand, we didn't get another Stranger Things set like that until Season 5. So maybe there was some behind the scenes negotiation before another set could be approved by the license holder, because of the leaks.

Totally! Classic Pirates is better than licensed Pirates, because licensed Pirates tells you that the islanders are cannibals while it's totally your choice whether classic Islanders are cannibals or not!

Even as a kid, it never occurred to me that the Islanders faction in the Pirates theme were cannibals. @Darth_Bane13, the idea might have occurred to you because there are cannibals in Pirates of the Caribbean, which you probably saw before you came across old Lego Pirates sets online. Lego Pirates predates the PotC movies by decades. Regardless, I'd just like to point out that just like Lego media hasn't dwelled on historical accounts of cannibalism in islander populations, it also hasn't dwelled on historical accounts of hangings and other executions by Age of Sail seafaring cultures. Remember, this is a fantasy land where King Kahuka and Captain Redbeard both have that same goofy classic Lego smile on their faces. Edit - I guess it was actually @Karalora that first brought up cannibals in the past few days of this thread? The Islanders are stereotypes to be sure, but I don't know why we suddenly started talking about whether or not they're cannibals.

While we're musing about bringing old "historic" themes under the City umbrella, you could easily make a City set for an Old West tourist trap like Tombstone or Old Tucson, and a heritage railroad to go with it. There's your City Western theme!

I think City Space 2024 has shown that the City label on any hypothetical City Castle or City Pirates doesn't actually have to mean anything, but for the sake of argument I'll say that one way to do City Pirates would be a maritime museum setting, like any of the old sailing ships docked by the quay in San Diego or like the museum berths of Constitution, Constellation, or Victory.

@SpacePolice89 Well played!

You may not remember it, but this was actually a fairly notable controversy in 2001. The Maori individuals who thought early Bionicle's use of Maori words and imagery was disrespectful were not "a few Karen complaints", and they weren't "white liberal women." It was an actual case of indigenous minorities taking offense at Lego's appropriation of their culture, and Lego made a good-faith effort to change in response. I mean, you can brush off anything this way if the only thing that matters is "kids having a fun toy." Edit - looking through your post history, you say you were born the year they switched the grays and browns. So, you don't remember the Bionicle controversy in 2001 because you weren't alive for it. Yes, please do imagine being offended over a Chinese toy line that turns, say, "American senior citizens" into little robots and has them constantly being threatened by giant robot bugs. You might be irked by it but laugh it off, or with a little more time and effort you might try and contact the Chinese toymaker and ask them to please call the little robots something different. I admit that's not a very effective way to transpose the Maori objections to "Tohunga" into a Western analogy, but maybe you can think of something different that you'd prefer to please not be made into a toy.

The combiner feature of the Land Bounty is pretty cool, but I miss the verticality provided by the sails in the old version, as well as the interior space behind the seats. I think I'll pass on the new version and see if I can get a good price on a used copy of the original. Of course, I should have done that a long time ago before the Bricklink inventory of half-price copies without minifigures was gone.

Thanks for the contemporary link to the article about Bionicle. Here's a link to a website about him today: https://www.climateone.org/people/maui-solomon

In a conversation like this, anyone should be prepared to back up a claim in either direction. I think the cross-theme Space push in 2024 was originally intended to capitalize on public interest in Artemis 2. That mission was originally scheduled to fly in 2024, two years after the uncrewed Artemis 1 test launch in 2022. It was delayed by two years to make sure the heat shield was safe to fly on, after the Artemis 1 heat shield suffered unexpected damage during reentry. I expect Lego got the financial returns they wanted out of the 2024 Space sets, but they weren't going to rush out another big Space wave in 2026 to accommodate NASA delays. So they kept the Icons version of the Artemis rocket on sale, made a smaller Technic version for 2026, and pushed ahead with the many other sets otherwise planned for this year. It's been a banger of a year so far, in my opinion.

As @danth has said so many times, classic themed Creator sets. It would be nice to have a Creator castle, a Creator pirate ship, and a small to medium sized Creator castle set and pirate set on shelves at all times, if it's not viable for whatever reason to produce full waves of either theme. Also, a rotation of Icons throwback sets at a slightly higher, but still accessible, price point. Or maybe I'll say this: Icons and Ideas seem to have budget structures that allow them to do themed one-offs pretty well at relatively high price points. It would be nice if there was another theme with a cost structure set up to do themed one-offs at relatively low price points, as regular retail sets (not just as gwps). Maybe you do a little Ice Planet spaceship one quarter and a little Vikings boat the next quarter.

Sorry, I didn't realize my wording there would be confusing. There hasn't been a BDP remake of Fort Legoredo, but there have been several Wild West BDP sets. https://brickset.com/sets/tag-Wild-West/theme-BrickLink

For example, there have been several big Wild West sets through BDP, and they're all about cowboys, miners, robbers, townspeople. It would be nice to get some smaller playsets of the same subjects. The Fort Legoredo set had the cowboy, cavalry, and bandit factions but it didn't have any Indians. There shouldn't be any compelling reason to avoid a Fort Legoredo remake with the same cast of characters. Yeah, like @danth said, that's not really fair play in this conversation. Not cool.

That sounds like a claim that should be fact-checked. I don't have time to fact-check that claim right now, but perhaps you'd care to provide some sources?