Lego David

Ok guys, forget about the goat, we just got a new sheep mold in the new 4+ Disney sets!

Funny enough, I just watched the Kingdom of Heaven movie for the first time a few days ago... perfect timing with this creation, lol .

Yeah, maybe I exaggerated my comment a bit, sorry about that. On a second thought, it does stand out as a Ninjago vehicle, but still, the design doesn't particularly resonate with me personally.

Yeah, that was my point. I am willing to bet most of the tributes to Classic themes that we do get are made mostly because those AFOL designers suggested them to TLG, not because TLG itself commissioned them. I have to agree, recreating exact duplicates would be impossible. But that doesn't mean they couldn't just straight up re-build those sets with the parts currently in production, right? As far as I am concerned, a remake of the Galaxy Explorer would be fairly easy to recreate, with the only part that might be hard to bring back being the crater baseplates.

Well if you collect the Ninjago sets based on how they reflect the show, I hate to break it to you but usually the sets have little to no accuracy to the show besides the vehicles. As far as I am aware, the show and the sets are developed separately at the same time, so none of them is exactly based off the other.

Not really digging any of the sets in particular. My favorite sets are probably either the Nya dragon or the Kai dragon, but given their price I probably won't be buying either of them. I am glad we got an updated 2011 Dragon head, I was really surprised they went to extra mile and did that. I don't care much for the figures either, except for Kalmaar, which I might get separately from Bricklink if he isn't too expensive. The rest of the sets are a big meh from me. Lloyd's Mech is not a bad set for 20$, but the design looks really awkward with that huge shoulder armor that makes no sense. Jay's Car almost looks like it was copy-pasted from the 2015 Jay Car, very boring and unoriginal. I don't know why everyone likes the Temple of the Endless Sea so much, it looks like just a bunch of random smaller builds thrown together IMO. The Hydro Bounty is way too expensive, and while it has a unique shape, its just another vehicle that doesn't do much to stand out from the crowd. Ultra Sonic Raider looks awful, the 2012 and 2016 were much better. Overall, a pretty mediocre wave, this feels like a big missed opportunity for me. They could have went all out with an Underwater wave and make it stand among the ranks of Aqua Zone and Atlantis, but the end result is pretty lame IMO. The fact that they decided to cut corners and just recycle the Snake villains from the 2019 wave makes it even more painful. There is so much you can do with the concept of Ninjas going underwater, but sadly, they seem to have just done the bare minimum.

The depends a lot on the set re-released in question. They can specifically avoid stuff they can't do anymore, and try to recreate something with parts they currently have at their disposal. And to be fair, unless we're talking about super expensive stuff like raised baseplates, I don't think re-issuing some older molds would be that big of a deal either. Also, if just straight-up re-releasing a set would be impossible, how did they manage to do that back in the early 2000's? Also, why can't they do opening flaps anymore? I can understand why they can't do certain types of packages like Canisters anymore, but what's the issue with opening flaps? Aren't those just pure cardboard too? Ehhh... I wouldn't be so sure about that. Every time we do get nods to TLG's heritage, it is mostly either because of AFOLs or because of designers, not because TLG itself is "proud of its heritage". I don't know, they seem to be doing that more often with licensed themes, not with their own original stuff. Also, stuff like Exo-Suit or Baracuda Bay wouldn't have existed without first being submitted to LEGO Ideas. Also, D2Cs being re-released doesn't count, because those aren't really for Nostalgia's sake as much as they are because of high demand.

Fun fact, there were plans to introduce a Buffalo mold in the 90's Western theme, but they never ended up appearing due to unknown reasons:

In general, I feel like LEGO is really missing out on the Nostalgia market. Many other companies, such as Disney, have built themselves upon constantly re-releasing their Classic Animated Movies, and sure enough, this strategy has worked for them for almost 80 years. Not only do you have the older nostalgic crowd, but you also bring those Classics to a new generation that has never experienced them before. Heck, Disney movies have made much, much more money from the re-releases than they did from the original release! I just don't understand why LEGO wouldn't do the same. Maybe it is because the original Legends re-releases from 2001-2002 were a big flop? At that time, those sets were LEGO exclusives, and this was during a time when LEGO Brand Stores were close to non-existent and the Online Shopping was just at its beginning. So it makes perfect sense why those original re-releases flopped, but... would they still flop again today, with LEGO Stores almost everywhere and LEGO.com selling most of the LEGO exclusives? Not to mention the 18+ line, and all the other stuff LEGO has recently done to appeal to the adult nostalgia market. I find it so odd that they stress themselves out releasing as many 18+ sets based off Nostalgic IP's as they can, when they could just as easily use their own Nostalgia properties!

My full thoughts on Season 15. ^^^

A common subject I see people being split on is the topic of how LEGO animals should be made. Some want everything to be brick-built, while others are completely fine with fully molded animals and creatures. Some don't like molded because it doesn't look "LEGO-like" while others like it because molded elements looks much more realistic than anything fully brick-built would achieve. Either way, animal and creature molds seem to be a big selling point of many sets, often times just the animals alone selling for almost as much as the set it came in originally retailed for. So there is clearly a demand for them, even though other people aren't really fans of molded creatures at all. Personally, I am kind of in between the two camps. I like both molded and brick-built creatures, depending on how good they look on their own. If given the option though, I'd say a combination between brick-built and molded would be ideal for me. For dragons, for example, I'd say the head and wings should be molded, and everything else should be brickbuilt. Despite that though, there have still been some awesome fully molded dragons, such as the magnificent Smaug from the Lonely Mountain set. What's your opinion on the subject? Do you prefer fully molded, fully brick-built, or something in between? Discuss!

It still baffles me that after so many years, LEGO still hasn't produced double-sided plates, a piece that many knock-off companies do have. So, yeah, I absolutely agree with this.

I don't know... The 11 minute runtime of each episode further gives me the "glorified ad" feel. At least in Ninjago, all the episodes are tied together and because of the narrative, you feel the desire to see what happens in the next episodes. In this show, however, after watching one of the episodes, it kind of feels like I've watched them all. You get some energetic animation and maybe one or two good jokes, but that's about it. I don't really see the point in watching the whole series, when I am going to completely forget everything that happened in it as soon as I am done watching it.

Ehh... I wouldn't go that far to be honest. To be fair, for me personally watching all the episodes felt quite tedious. So far, this show has had nothing of substance for me. Sure, the animation is nice, but besides that, I have zero investment in either the plot or the characters. To me this feels more like an average Saturday Morning cartoon than anything else (the fact that all the episodes are 10 minutes instead of the usual 20 minutes doesn't help either). Again, I can appreciate that they went all out with the animation style, but... what else is there?

That is indeed a very strange piece, but by looking at it, I can easily picture it being incorporated in a larger space ship MOC of sorts. This is another one of those gimmicky parts, but I can still see it maybe used as a weapon in a larger Bionicle/Constraction MOC. Funny enough, now I feel an odd desire to go to Bricklink and purchase those parts and play around with them, and see what I can come up with.

I cannot comprehend what the heck LEGO was thinking when they decided not to release any normal playsets in the first wave. By the time this wave hits the shelves, the line might as well be considered a failure, and result in the later wave stuff getting very limited release, like it happened with TLM2. That said, those sets look kind weird, but the minifigures are great. The thing that excites me the most are all the new minifigure pieces, as well as the recolors of the wave 1 pieces. But even if not as expensive as the Beatboxes, those normal sets still seem kind of pricy for what they are. Overall, I might pick up some of those minifigure parts from Bricklink, but I don't have much interest in everything else.

What piece are you specifically referring to? Maybe I can have a look around to see if I can find some MOCs that use it (I do that all the time, lol).

Have you ever heard about the term "nice part usage"? That's right, there is no limit to what you can do with LEGO pieces, all it takes is just a little bit of creative thinking outside the box. Just to give you an example, look at what the builder Jonas Kramm managed to build using a bunch of super specialized pieces, such as a lioness mold, a fantasy castle troll, and those big Star Wars creature legs. There is no such thing a "useless" LEGO piece, all it takes is just a little bit of creativity.

A set concept for our LEGO World Builder project, based off some drawings done by a friend of mine. Original concept drawings:

I was not expecting a Creator Castle too look this good. I was quite positively surprised. I also appreciate how they decided to go the extra mile and make this look more like a civilian castle rather than the typical war fortresses we usually get. Also, the Black Falcon torsos are finally gonna be more widely available, so I can see army builders being very excited about that. Overall, this quite surpassed my expectations, and I am happy to say that it looks better than most Castle sets from the actual Castle theme. If this is the future for Castle, than it looks pretty bright (that is, if we do end up getting more sets in this style ).

Huh, I never thought of that before. But now, thinking about it, it does make a lot of sense. The Ninjago Movie and seasons 8 and 9 would have been developed separately, so the 1 year delay before the series reboot does make a lot of sense. And here we have a it again, another great series ruined by a corporation that lost confidence in it. If LEGO continues to intervene too much into the show's development, cutting budget and not letting the creators properly do their thing, I wouldn't be surprised if Ninjago ended within the next few years.

The change of writers after season 9 was so painfully obvious. Ever since the Hagemen Brothers retired from writing the show, the series has bee going downhill for me. Sure, we do get the occasional good season like MotM, but pretty much everything else kind of falls flat. Whether that is because the writers don't take what they're doing seriously, or maybe the higher-ups don't take it seriously and don't give them the resources they need, but something still feels wrong.

To be honest, this is one of the things that really bothers me about Ninjago's current state. Sometimes certain seasons try to get darker and more mature, but as soon as they are done with that particular season, they go back to being childish and immature. For a show that has ran for this long, this is pretty embarrassing. If you want to create a mature show that older audiences can take seriously, then stick to it. But if you want to create a childish kid's cartoon, again, stick to it. Constantly mixing those two up over and over again is really starting to annoy me. It feels to me that every time the show takes a step forward in being more mature, it takes three steps backwards very soon afterwards.

Eventually, Ninjago will run out of steam and its popularity will begin to decline (you could argue that has already started happening). If a new Big Bang theme comes out, and it is executed in way that manages to attract new fans, then it would have a pretty high chance of winning. I feel like at this point, Ninjago doesn't really bring it that many new fans... most of its current fans are the same people who got into the theme when it first came out. That's why LEGO needs to introduce a new big theme with every new generation of kids, if they want to attract new fans.

Well, it so happends that we drew just that for one of the characters in our LEGO World Builder project: Is this what you would want all "Bigfig" characters to look like?