Lego David

This is probably the camp I fall into. Of course, I can technically come up with my own designs, but it's still a lot of fun taking a style already made in a LEGO theme and using it as a foundation for my own builds. LEGO themes often spark our imagination and give us new ideas for MOCs, and that's why I want LEGO to produce more original in-house Space themes.

I 100% agree. A lot of AFOLs seem to be wearing nostalgia googles that they just can't take off... and when LEGO produces a new theme that is similar, and potentially even better than what they are used to, they just choose to ignore it. I saw this happen several times with themes such as Mars Mission, Atlanits, Pharaoh's Quest, etc.

Molded animals will always look better than anything brickbuilt animals can achieve though. Brick-built by it's nature just looks way too blocky, which I don't like. On top of that, the larger animals mold are still made up of multiple parts instead of only one piece (like Playmobil usually is) so the potential for MOCing is still there.

I like the set a bit more now that we know the figures and animals that will come with it, but still, the final product does leave a lot to be desired, especially since it's the only legitimate Castle set we got in almost 8 years.

Cute! I like the use of the Witch Doctor head.

We just designed another Sea Monster for our theme: Cetus, a giant serpent-like creature.

Among Us is just another one of those games that became trendy for a limited time only (mostly just because some well-known Youtubers played it). We've seen this happen with so many other games, such as Clash Royale and Fortnite. While sure, you can look at the number of downloads and think that they are still popular, their cultural impact just didn't last. In my opinion, LEGO shouldn't approve LEGO Ideas projects that are based off temporary current trends and focus on more timeless IPs instead.

Technically speaking, any of the sets that reached 10k supporters are something the community more or less wants, otherwise it wouldn't have gotten to 10k supporters in the first place. Maybe the projects that get approved are not what you personally want, but I'm sure they would still make the people who voted for that project happy. I know how frustrating that can be for a lot of people (believe me, I've been through that situation myself), but at the end of the day, LEGO will choose whatever projects they want. They can't please everyone out there, regardless how much they try to "listen to us". That goes to show the broken current state of LEGO Ideas, which right now is basically just all about fanbases desperately trying to get their favorite IP made into LEGO. In my opinion, LEGO Ideas should be less about that, and more about... you know... actual new Ideas.

The last review stage had 35 projects qualify, this one only has 25. I expected the number of projects that reach 10k supporters to continue growing, but it seems like I was wrong. Anyway, LEGO Ideas is getting more and more hard to predict. I agree with some of the other people here that this might be one of the rare occasions where they may not choose anything to produce into sets.

Well CCBs is technically now discontinued, so we will probably not see anymore improvements to it...

Or LEGO World Builder, for that matter. There are already a few good space-themed projects on that site.

The problem with that though is that even when Ninjago does have cool villains, they are usually have a very small amount of sets for themselves. We might get one cool villain-focused set, but that would be it. Pretty much the rest of the wave would be focused on the Ninja vehicles (and as you pointed out yourself, that is especially an issue with the Legacy waves). And to be honest I far prefer the good guy stuff from lines like Agents, Ultra Agents or Alien Conquest simply because those lines do a much better job balancing the amount of good guy and bad guy vehicles we get. With Ninjago, on the other hand, the disproportionate number of Ninja stuff vs the number of bad guy stuff is rather obvious.

I fear that because of the final set being so different from the original submission, this set is not going to sell very well, and then LEGO would blame that on the "lack of interest in LEGO Castle" instead of the questionable choices they made with the set.

As far as I know they do invite the original submission's designer to help out with designing the LEGO Ideas set, but that's about it. I don't think they do any AFOL focus test groups of any kind, otherwise this set would have looked a lot more different.

If this were a normal LEGO Castle set, I would believe that. But it is actually a LEGO Ideas set that will presumably be rated as 18+. So I don't really see how focus test groups could be behind this when the set is probably going to be aimed at AFOLs, and not kids.

Oh, sorry I didn't know that.

There is an argument to be made about those Big Bang themes being mostly just Ninjago Clones, meant to re-capture the success of Ninjago istead of doing their own thing. Where as with those one-off orginal themes from the late 2000's and early 2010's I think I can safely say that they did their own thing, independet from other themes. While the basic premise of those Big Bang themes may be quite wholly original, it's mostly the execution that killes them. They are all marketed in the shadow of Ninjago, which isn't going to help them succeed in the slightest. However, if you want to do a smaller theme with less marketing push like say, an underwater theme like Atlantis, you can do whatever you want in this underwater theme, because it's not tied to any other LEGO IP. If you want to do an underwater theme as a Ninjago wave, however, you are going to be severaly limited by the Ninjago formula, which is shoehorning in the typical mechs, jets, mototcycles and cars that we get more or less in every wave. Maybe that isn't the case with you, but other people getting tired of it should be competely understandable.

I agree that it's already a little too late, but honestly it is better late than never. Any sort of wider released would be more than welcomed.

From what I heard, the goat mold was actually destroyed years ago. The LEGO designer Mark Stafford wanted to include it in the T-Rex Rampage set from last year, but he couldn't. So don't expect to see any goat mold of any kind in this set.

I am not really a fan of the color choices for the roof, and I far prefer the original submission's more muted colors that looked a lot more Medieval-ish. And the fact that they downscaled it so much is also quite disappointing to me. Overall, a good set, but the original submission was a lot better.

I'll tell you what's not to like. At this point, LEGO just keeps dumping all their ideas for potential new themes into Ninjago instead of taking a small risk and creating new themes with those ideas. Remember all those amazing one-off LEGO themes from the late 2000's and early 2010's? Now they can't happen anymore, because they need to be part of Ninjago. Have you ever wandered why we get so few new original themes nowdays? It's all because of Ninjago. And let's be real here, while some of those ideas work for Ninjago, most of them are completely parallel to it. Just continuing to release the same boring Ninja vehicles over and over again except with slightly different design twists in order to fir the setting has gotten incredibly stale in my opinion. Air Bounty, Water Bounty, Land Bounty, Hydro Bounty? How many more variants of the exact same vehicle do we really need? This whole situation has started to get kind of similar to what LEGO Star Wars does, which is just remaking the same sets over and over again (granted, with Ninjago it's not as bad as it is with Star Wars, but you get my point). I really hope the new LEGO World Builder platform brings a much needed change to LEGO, and will allow us to get more original LEGO themes independent from Ninjago.

There is a new LEGO theme coming in 2021, known as "Vidyo". From what we know so far, it's going to be a new line aimed at girls, and it's going to be made in partnership of LEGO with Universal. It's also going to have an app tie-in, and it's rumored to be music-themed. There was a new minifigure mermaid tail mold that leaked online, and some have speculated that the mold probably originated from this theme. Leave your thoughts and speculations here.

I looked around #legoleaks, but I just couldn't find it. Can you please give some guiding as to where to find it?

I disagree... I think Trolls is more creative than Minions. Although both of those lines were completely pointless and unneeded, at the very least Trolls gave us some interesting new parts and colorful builds. The Minions sets, on the other hand, felt completely random and have little to no redeeming qualities like Trollls has.

Here is my personal list: Best Set: 80012 Monkey King Warrior Mech Best New Theme: Monkie Kid Best New Element: Propeller 1 Blade 14L with Axle Hole Best New Animal Mould: Glow in the dark Anglerfish Best Minifigure: Nehmaar Reem Best Creator Expert Set: 10271 Fiat 500 Best Ninjago Set: 71721 Skull Sorcerer's Dragon Best Technic Set: 42115 Lamborghini Sian FKP 37 Worst New Themes: Trolls and Minions.