icm

I'd say within the reduced scale of Lego, five floors would be a pretty good Modular Buildings skyscraper. Probably cost about $500 though.

To be fair, this year's superb excavator and mobile crane can be seen as remakes of the 2005 models, after a fashion.

I think we can safely say that you won't go to the movie theater for Superman (2025).

Looks like the Remora from The Bad Batch and the Night Buzzard from Somehow, Sheev had a baby. I'm happy to strike it off my wanted list. I wasn't sure which, if either, I would find more interesting of the Dark Falcon and the Onyx Cinder, but the Dark Falcon wins by a mile. Since I have the Somehow, Sheev Falcon I'll skip the Dark one. I'll save my money for the ISD, which I actually really like.

Looks like a very modern build to me. It doesn't look like a 2000s-era Delta 7 to me at all.

Reminds me of the Eagle Stunt Flyer

Well, gas stations have been part of Lego town and city layouts for decades, and in the past they have often had Shell logos. Lego hasn't made a big gas station for a big layout for almost a decade. It makes perfect sense for a growing competitor like Cada to exploit that gap in the market.

I wonder if the OP is a bot:/

Exactly. The botanicals are like the Creator animals - clearly based on the real world, but there's a lot of freedom of interpretation and no one canonical prototype to reproduce.

I count the botanicals as unlicensed because there is considerable creative freedom in how they are interpreted, as plants take a huge variety of forms and colors, even for plants of the same kind. If you read my prior posts more closely, you will understand that I already said that specific makes and models are licensed, generic versions aren't. The licensed Polaroid is licensed. The generic Creator camera and the generic Ideas typewriter, Piano, and Maze are not. Please show more reading comprehension.

^ This. They've moved onto the big Chinese marketplaces (Temu, Wish, Aliexpress) but they haven't gone away.

Unfortunately, it is still a thing. The big thieving bootleg company is now called Marstoy, not Lepin, but it does the same thing that Lepin used to do.

Yeah, I watched the whole season and I still don't know what that's supposed to be.

That's what I want to do.

I think we all agree that you should buy whatever sets you fancy that you can afford, from whatever theme.

Same for Art. I don't know if any licensing had to be negotiated for Mona Lisa and the Great Wave, but I count those as licensed because they are clearly faithful Lego renditions of unique, easily identifiable, world-famous paintings, rather than a more generic Lego Art portrait of some other woman in a vaguely Renaissance style, or a more generic Lego Art picture of some rough seas in a vaguely Japanese style.

I think they generally don't, but I include them in my licensed count because they're clearly intentional, deliberate, specific models of something rather than coming directly from the designer's imagination. In that sense an Architecture model of the Colosseum is no different than a Speed Champions model of a Ferrari. I would count a similarly sized model of a generic ruined Romanesque arena as unlicensed, but if it's specifically the Colosseum in Rome, then I count it as licensed.

Right, I agree with you on that.

That doesn't look like Lego to me. I think those parts are from a competitor brand.

@MAB I agree with most of what you're saying, but I disagree that there's a "fine line" between unlicensed and licensed content in most themes. An unlicensed motorcycle has no license. A licensed motorcycle does. They may be very similar in most regards, but having a license or not is (nearly) binary. It's a categorical variable, not a quantitative variable. @TeriXeri The Icons vehicles have just as much license tax as the Dark Falcon. Look at the Countach, the Corvette, or the raised price on the Porsche 911. Unlicensed Icons with a similar part count would certainly cost less.

Sorry, I didn't understand why you had included Books in the list. I agree with what you're saying in the second paragraph.

True.

You included Books in your list of sets on the last page. We disagree that Books count as sets, regardless of license status.

It's hard to take you seriously when you say this. Every single set in the Speed Champions line has had one or more licensed cars in it. Leaving the stickers off doesn't magically make it an unlicensed car, just like leaving the stickers off a Star Wars spaceship doesn't magically make it not a Star Wars spaceship. I'll use the same themes you do, leaving off Books and Gear. (Seriously, why count Books? Brickset lists Blocks Magazine under Books, and that is not a Lego set and not produced by Lego and not affiliated with Lego in any way!) I'll count CMFs as individual sets, because they're sold and marketed that way, even though that tends to inflate set counts because of their very small piece count. I am counting polybags. I'm not counting magazine gifts, because those have a very limited distribution (even more limited than polybags). I'm not counting combo packs of two or more sets packaged together at a discounted price. I am counting the Bricklink Designer Program sets, because those are very close to official short-run boutique sets. I'm not counting the Education sets, because those are intended for even less of a general audience than the BDP sets, and they certainly aren't in stores. I'm not counting make-and-take models, employee gifts, or anything sent only to influencers. I am counting the online Pick-A-Brick model experiment, because that was supposed to be a one-click-order type of thing available to everyone, even though it was highly experimental. I'll use bold = licensed, italic = unlicensed. I'll do set counts for model year 2023, because model year 2024 isn't over yet. All my information comes from Brickset. I'm just doing set counts, not adjusting for set size or imagined set sales volume or anything like that. For real-world objects or art pieces that require no licensing because they are in the public domain, I'm counting them as licensed if the source material is a single unique identifiable object or work (like the Colosseum, Notre Dame, the Mona Lisa, or the Great Wave). I'm counting them as unlicensed if they are amalgamations with creative license (such as Skylines) or are not identifiable as a single make and model (such as the Typewriter or the Icons Pickup Truck). Architecture licensed - 2 Architecture unlicensed - 0 Art licensed - 2 Art unlicensed - 1 Avatar licensed - 5 Brickheadz licensed - 17 Brickheadz unlicensed - 0 Bricklink licensed - 0 Bricklink unlicensed - 5 City unlicensed - 47 Classic unlicensed - 10 CMF licensed - 24 CMF unlicensed - 12 Creator licensed - 1 Creator unlicensed - 22 DC Super Heroes licensed - 6 Disney licensed - 26 Dots licensed - 3 Dots unlicensed - 7 Dreamzzz unlicensed - 12 Duplo licensed - 4 Duplo unlicensed - 17 Friends unlicensed - 40 Gabby's Dollhouse licensed - 4 Harry Potter licensed - 17 Icons licensed - 5 Icons unlicensed - 11 Ideas licensed - 3 Ideas unlicensed - 4 Indiana Jones licensed - 3 Jurassic World licensed - 5 Marvel Super Heroes licensed - 29 Minecraft licensed - 12 Miscellaneous licensed - 1 (the soccer set had licensed likenesses of famous soccer players) Miscellaneous unlicensed - 18 (this is inflated by VIP add-on packs and Pick-A-Brick online models) Monkie Kid unlicensed - 10 Ninjago unlicensed - 26 Promotional unlicensed - 14 (there's a lot of room for debate about what to count in this category) Seasonal unlicensed - 16 Sonic the Hedgehog licensed - 5 Speed Champions licensed - 6 Star Wars licensed - 31 Super Mario licensed - 22 Technic licensed - 14 Technic unlicensed - 4 Total licensed - 247 Total unlicensed - 276 By my tally, the number of licensed sets that "count" is about 89% of the number of unlicensed sets that "count," for the model year 2023. However, the number of unlicensed sets is inflated by VIP add-on packs, Pick-A-Brick online models, various Promotional VIP rewards, and the Bricklink Designer Program. Without those, the unlicensed total would be about 239, which is about 97% of the licensed total, or essentially identical. I conclude that of the sets that "really count" (in my opinion), it's very close to a 50-50 split between licensed and unlicensed. (Unadjusted for parts count, product weight, recommended retail price, shelf space, or sales volume.) Now, as for the question of sales volume or shelf space, licensed vs unlicensed: none of us in the internet peanut gallery know much about sales volume, but I suppose anyone could go to the store and make a careful tally of shelf space. I'm not going to do that! PS - It was Racers, not Speed Champions, that was a mix of licensed and unlicensed. But that's an old theme, not an ongoing theme. Racers content is now split between Speed Champions, City, and Technic.

There are four non licensed Technic Space sets this year. But yeah, certainly Books don't count as an unlicensed theme either.