Lego David

They specifically stated in the LEGO World Builder guidelines that they are gonna pay 37.000 dollars to the creator and 12.500 dollars to the contributors of a theme idea they want to officially produce. If they are only interested in a few specific characters or elements from a theme idea, but not the full theme, they can also purchase just that for around 1500 dollars or so. Here is a link to the official guidelines, if you want to know more: https://worldbuilder.tongal.com/about/world-guidelines Honestly, this seems like fair deal to me. Not only do you get the chance to see your creation become an official LEGO theme, but you also get payed a decent amount for it. I see nothing bad about that, personally. Sure, its a little dubious for such a big company like LEGO to ask fans to come up with ideas for them, but honestly, I am happy they are giving us a chance to use our creativity, and even potentially get paid for it.

I mean, they did the Lava Monsters in Nexo Knights, and let's face, it, it is pretty clear what those monsters are supposed to be demons, even if LEGO used a different name for them.

That's the exact thing they did with Bionicle, and it worked pretty well there. In 2001-2003, you have a story with the original 6 heroes, and then 2004-2005 they completely changed the characters and setting into a prequel story, then 2006-2007 they changed the main characters again, but continuing from where the 2003 story left off, until finally returning to the original 6 heroes in 2008. I honestly have no idea why they haven't used this strategy again for Ninjago. Changing the main characters every 2-3 years can help a lot in keeping a story fresh, but sadly no other LEGO theme has ever done it besides Bionicle.

Chima is also one of the rare examples of a modern LEGO themes driven by ambigous factions (something a lot of Castle fans seem to want). Sure, its made pretty clear that Lions, Eagles and Gorillas are good guys, and the Crocs being obviously the bad guys, but the Wolves and Ravens were more of the amigous type that you can't really tell if they are good or evil, since they acted entirely out of their own interests. I assume a lot of Castle fans would want the same type of factions but with normal human minifigures instead of animals.

I also sent him a private message on Instagram (where he appears to be more active), hopefully he'll see it there.

@Nuju Metru Have you thought about submitting this theme idea of yours to the new LEGO World Builder platform?

Sorry for bringing up an old thread, but someone should really submit this awesome theme idea to the new LEGO World Builder platform.

Each faction could have various siege engines and war equipment of their own. So instead of vehicles, you get stuff like War Ships, Siege Machines, Carriages, or you could even go as far as having some of the factions ride on elephants or other large "Tank" creatures. There is a tone of potential.

How exactly is that possible? If this were about testing with adults, it would make sense, but with kids? How exactly are they gonna force a strict non-disclosure agreement to little kids who just came to play with some new sets?

We all know about the fact that TLG often does focus test groups in order to determine how kids react to certain types of sets, but not much else. How exactly do they select the kids that are going to be tested? How much do those focus groups influence the final products? If kids react negatively, what do they do? Which sets specifically go through focus test groups, and which don't? By any chance, has anyone here ever been involved in any of those focus groups, in order to answer some of those questions? I am really curious, since I didn't even know about the existence of focus test groups until recently.

In the "Future Castle sets" thread, there was a lot of discussion regarding whether Castle still resonates with modern kids or not, and one of most controversal points of discussion was whether giving a Castle theme a fully fledged story and characters would make it more popular. Some support the idea, while others are against it, because Castle should stay generic. But, just for the purpose of discussion, let's pretend that the only way kids will get engaged in a new Castle theme is through a story. If it were up to you, what kind of story do you think a Castle theme should have? Should it be something more "realsitic", like A Knight's Tale, or perhaps something more fantasy, in the same style as Lord of the Rings? What style of story do you think would fit best for a LEGO Castle theme? If jelly bean Ninjas riding in oversized vehicles can last for 10 years purley because it has a decent story and characters, I am pretty sure the same could happen with Castle, which is much more universal than Ninjas. So, if hypotetically the only way Castle could ever come back would be through a story, what kind of story do you personally think it should have?

To expand upon this a bit, I have a little unpopular opinion of my own: LEGO has gotten a bit too carried away with those 18+ D2C sets in the past year, and they should make less of those sets. I understand that this sort of market is very profitable, but it shouldn't come at the cost of them forgetting about their core target audience, that is, kids. When you are making sets like Friends, Stranger Things, Seinfield, etc they are clearly trying to lure in adults that are generally not FOLs, and after those people got the set based off the license they wanted, they have no reason to stick around. So, instead of focusing on bringing in new long-lasting fans, they just sell those sets to one-off customers that only buy it because of the license. I don't think that sort of strategy will be good in the long-term. If LEGO really wanted to appease the long-time adult fans, they should just make what we've always wanted, that is bringing back themes like Castle or Pirates in some form. Not just as one-off D2Cs, but as fully fledged set waves.

I never understood the hate for raised baseplates. I personally find them quite useful for creations like this one! Nice work!

I've always wanted to see a MOC of Borg's Tower, and finally at last, someone made one. Great work! Looks very imposing, and quite accurate to the Ninjago TV Show!

Of course they do, my point is that I expect that they will continue doing more and more of those digital products in the future.

I wholeheartedly agree, but sadly, The LEGO Group seems to believe otherwise. Back in the early 2000's, during their worst financial period, they blamed video games for their poor sales, despite the real reasons behind their low profits being more internal (poor management, experimental products, too high production costs, etc). After their profits stabilized, they left behind all those experiments, and did what they do best, focusing on the physical products... until now. I'd imagine they now blame their recent lack of grouth in North America on video games again, and they now try to stay relevant by trying to combine physical and digital play, assuming that kids are gonna jump to their phones as soon as they are finished building the sets. Whether that is true or not its hard to say, but I'd imagine TLG's focus test groups and market research suggests that (otherwise, why would this be such a big concern to them?) I assume this trend will continue for years to come, until they finally strike success. Fair enough, I wouldn't be surprised if they actually tried this sort of technology in years to come. It doesn't sound very complicated, and it could be something we could very well see in the next 5-10 years.

I'd imagine at that point they would have finally figured out how to combine physical and digital play in a way that is successful. They've experimented with this kind of technology quite a lot over the past five years (with underwhelming results), and I'd imagine they will continue to do so until they finally strike success. There is no way to say at this point what form this successful combination of physical and digital play will take, but in 40 years from now I am fairly confident it will become a staple of the LEGO brand, as kids' interests continue to move away from physical toys more and more.

In the LEGO Ideas rules, they specifically say that you are not allowed to propose new molds, and they will only create new molds if they deem it absolutely necessary. I assume that's probably because they want to limit the budget of Ideas sets to as little as possible, unless the set is based off a popular IP that they believe will be profitable, and they can't do that IP without creating the new molds.

Wait, so the Castle is gonna be completely yellow, like the original 1978 Castle? Seriously? If that's gonna be the case, I am probably not gonna be interested in purchasing the set (I wanted it mostly for the grey bricks so I can build my own Castle MOC). A Yellow Castle just isn't really something that would make sense in 2021, nostalgia biases aside. I really hope the actual set turns out to be gray, as all Castles should be.

1500+ pieces for 100$ sounds like a good deal, though the fact that it will only include three figures is a bit disappointing. Fingers crossed that they re-use the Black Falcons torso print from the Blacksmith set instead of some generic Creator torso print.

To answer your question, yes, LEGO has changed quite a lot in the past decade, especially since the first LEGO Movie. By far, the biggest of those changes is that they went from an independent family-owned company to a multi-billion dollar industrial corporation in less the 10 years. In 2010, they first announced that they will do a full-on partnership with Disney for the first time, which caused them to adopt a corporate mentality that continues to this day only gets worse as the years pass. Like Disney, LEGO has gotten to the point where they enjoy so much success that they are virtually unstoppable, and start buying up other companies (the recent aqusition of Bricklink is a forshadowing of that). They now want to maximize their profits at all costs, and if that requires abandoning their beloved classic themes, they will gladly do it. So, if anything, I'd say the corporatization of LEGO is probably the biggest thing to blame for the lack of classic themes (and original themes in general) nowdays. Much like Disney, they have gotten to the point of where they are creatively bankrupt, to the point where they go as far as asking the fans to provide them with ideas for "the next Ninjago" with the LEGO World Builder platform.

Tommy Anderson, one of the leading people working on Ninjago said in an interview that they work under a strict policy of not referencing any major story material from older seasons into the new seasons, so new viewers won't get confused. So kids can still get into the Ninjago show even if they weren't even born when it first started, and even if they haven't seen the older seasons. That's part of the secret of Ninjago's enduring success.

I actually did think about the idea of Pirate Orcs before, but I'm not sure if it really fits with the original vision I had for this theme idea... I'll still take it into consideration, though. We have some more characters designs! Buck the Engineer, one of the main heroes: A Zombie Pirate, which is controlled by Lord Zodrek's dark magic: And an evil Siren:

The reason the helmet designs look so oversized and silly was because they were conceptualized as Large Figure masks first, and then downscaled to fit minifigures. So personally, I can't blame them for that. I can understand the criticism regarding the Knight's color scheme, as their bright colors don't blend very well with the rest of the theme's generally muted color scheme. It probably would have worked better if instead they used Dark Red, Dark Blue, Dark Green etc for the Knights, though I can still understand the desire to appeal to kids with more colorful knights. But personally, I still love the uniqueness of KKII, and especially the Large Buildable Figure parts, which are incredibly useful for Bionicle MOCs. I really wish LEGO did more with the Constraction Knights concept.

Can I get a link to this German YouTube channel? I have heard several people mention it across forums before, but I haven't checked it out myself.