Accio Lego

I wouldn’t rule them out – all of them have been around long enough that they’ve got a solid stable of adult fans. Sesame Street and Winnie the Pooh both got larger sets than you’d expect from their target audiences too. They were both Ideas sets, but the point stands that Lego knows they can sell $100+ standalone sets of a kid friendly IP. The Ideas submissions for ATLA, for instance, often feature fairly sizable buildable Appas and half a dozen minifigs — probably already pushing the ‘P’ price tag, and if you add a side build… Likewise, a well done Krusty Krab could easily make the $160 range. Admittedly, my experience with TMNT is almost exclusively through seeing commercials for the toys as a kid, but I remember enough to know you could easily throw together an appropriately priced set for them, especially since it would need to be even more minifigure heavy than the other two.

It’s been awhile since Lego has made a Green Lantern, but if you look up the DC CMF you can see what I’m talking about. Lantern characters in DC comics get their superpowers from rings. Obviously, Lego minifigures can’t wear rings, but there are some instances of Lego representing it by having the Minifigure hold a clear 79194 shaft with knob with a 1x1 circular tile with the ring’s symbol printed on attached to it. So, essentially an accessory worn on a finger turned into a handheld accessory. Theoretically, a wrist mounted accessory could work with a similar treatment.

Ugh, yes, I was reading through the comments on a social media post about the announcement and there were so many people speculating and saying what they’d like it to be. Like… you could actually do something about that, you know. You could design something for the contest or at least make an account to vote for the finalists. One previous contest and CMF isn’t a pattern, obviously, but it has established that there’s a possibility of more when a license specific contest like this shows up – whether that’s a CMF like D&D, Brickheadz, or something else. And this license in particular would certainly benefit from a CMF budget for minifig parts.

Either side leg printing or a hip piece like the Batman utility belt, depending on how important Lego and the license holder think that accessory is. More interesting is how they’d go about those duel disk things – some new way to do wrist mounted accessories or just take some artistic liberties and have it be handheld like the Green Lantern rings of recent iteration? I’ve got no skin in the game, as it were, so it’s really just rank curiosity for me. I’ll be interested to see if the finalists for the Ideas contest are minifig compatible like the D&D one or not – that should give at least some indication on whether Lego is planning a concurrent minifig series or not.

The rumored Yu-gi-oh Lego Ideas contest has been announced, and I figure it’s worth bringing up in the future CMFs thread because we’re seeing the same format used for D&D, which ultimately had a CMF released alongside its big Ideas set. My knowledge of the franchise is limited, but I do know there are plenty of hair wigs and accessories needed that would make a CMF for the theme completely justified.

There is no ‘if’ about getting Ron’s patronus – it’s just a matter of which set. Ginny might have a better shot than you think, since she’s got the double advantage of having a preexisting animal and casting it on screen. The patronuses also haven’t been strictly confined to regular playsets either, since the Secret Potions Class includes Hermione’s Otter and is more of a buildable cauldron than a playset. Most of the ‘hidden room’ sets across themes have been plants, and we do have a plant based set with a weirdly mistranslated name and an unfavorable price to piece ratio, after all.

So, looking at the piece counts vs. prices of the set leaks is interesting. Knockturn Alley Shops, Hogwarts: East Wing, and Forbidden Forest: Expecto Patronum are all about what I’d expect, especially since they all involve large and/or new animal molds. Hogwarts Crest and Dobby the Free Elf are also around what you’d expect for buildable display pieces. They’ve got a much better parts to piece ratio, but ultimately don’t have minifigures or large molded/printed pieces. The Hogwarts Plants and Baby Norbert sets are interesting though. The Plants apparently cost $100 for 817 pieces. To put it in perspective, if you search through the current Botanicals sets you’ll find one going for the same price (the winter Wreath) that has nearly 1200 pieces. Likewise, Norbert costs $50 and only has 480 pieces, which isn’t bad, but it’s much closer to a playset than a buildable creature. Norbert could be explained by the baby dragon featuring large custom molds and/or fabric wings (which would definitely be appreciated), but the ratio on the plants set is crazy. The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is there might be a small sound brick for the theoretical mandrake build, although the price per piece ratio isn’t nearly as bad as the Sorting Hat set. I suppose the other option has be discussed before – that it’s name has been mistranslated and it’s not a themed Botanicals set at all, but another castle playset.

Oh no, I’ve been skipping most of the buildable animal sets the past few years, but if they actually do a good buildable baby dragon I might not be able to resist.

If the Ideas contest proves real, it’s worth remembering that big Ideas set + CMF is how Lego did handled D&D…

Given that we’re all low-key expecting Shrek 5 sets closer to when the movie actually comes out, I wonder if the ogre characters will each have their own molded heads or if there will be a sort of universal ogre head with the ear stalks that can be paired with different wigs like we saw with the Na’vi in the Avatar sets.

I was referring to the Jessica Drew Spider-woman from the movie – who is visibly pregnant and also one of the leaders of the Spider Society, making the snub of her in favor of background/cameo characters like Spider-cowboy, Spider-cyborg, and Spider-werewolf rather blatant.

I’d be more interested in seeing the big belly torso that’s been floating around in concept art form for years. (It would make up for not giving us a pregnant belly in the Spiderverse series like they should have)

Yeah, but that’s a smaller accessory instead of a component of the main minifigure. Also worth noting that the leaker just describes it as a ‘Great fig’ and nothing else – which isn’t a description I’d lean towards if the head was a recolored mask (in contrast, the Cute Witch is described as ‘pretty standard’, so a lot of us are expecting her to just use the hat+hair combo first released in the Hocus Pocus set).

I mean, can we entirely rule out that none of these are K-Pop Demon Hunters, and whatever sets that franchise is getting aren’t coming later than these and haven’t gotten leaks yet?

Personally, it’s a ‘finding things later’ thing for me. Year long threads are easier to look through and reference than multiple-year ones, and if nothing else, a change in name to accurately reflect the time period covered would be preferred.

Possibly, but a moot point for this thread since the September CMF is apparently an IP that’s never had sets before, so if P, B, or Lollipop is connected to the CMF it can’t also be the one that’s a returning theme.

I suppose that could still theoretically work in conjunction with the CMF if the license in question is Street Fighter. We still don’t know if any of these are connected to the CMF though, it’s all just a ‘what if’ to keep in mind while we wait for more info.

Finally got my back ordered Lovegood house this week. A couple of fun things I noticed: We’ve finally got a new Quibbler cover print. It’s not super obvious since it’s tucked away in the printing press when the set is built, but there’s a 2x3 tile with a print of the unnumbered edition featuring a large multiheaded caricature (previous Quibbler tiles were always the iconic no. 240274 with the spectraspecs). It gets zero attention in the shop@home set photos, but there is a specialized tile+sticker to recreate Luna’s painting of her friends on her bedroom ceiling. This was a lovely detail from the books that never made it to the movies since they decided to cut out the part where Luna’s room is visited, so I’m really happy to see it on Lego form. The clear parts used for the projector feature are printed with the Deathly Hallows symbols, not stickers. It seems like a good fact to put out there since some people were probably worried about how well that play feature would work with their sticker applying abilities (or just stickers in general).

I think ‘B’ is probably the rumored K-Pop Demon Hunters sets – in part because there are two 12+ sets there and experience says that’s more likely to be because they’re buildable objects rather than playsets for a more mature theme (examples: the Wednesday playsets are 10+ despite the show being very dark. Harry Potter playsets are between 7-10+ but several of the buildable objects/animals are 14+). A buildable Derpy Tiger is an obvious choice for a set (there have been multiple Ideas submissions), so I could easily see him being 72421 or 72422, the other one being a buildable Huntr/x logo with a trio of minidolls or minifigs, and 72423 being a big stage playset with plenty of characters. The leak didn’t specify if we were looking at two returning themes and one new, or one returning theme and two new, so ‘P’ and ‘Lollipop’ are really up in the air. Personally, I think ATLA has a stronger chance of getting new sets than TMNT or SpongeBob simply because Legend of Aang is coming out this year and the theme has definitely seems more popular than the other two as far as Lego Ideas submissions go.

Latest leaks name three code-named themes that are ‘new IP and returning’: - P (one set: 72306 $160) - B (three sets: 72421 [12+], 72422 [12+], 72423 $120) - Lollipop (one set: 72537 $70) And I’m dropping the info here because conceivably one of these could be a tie in set for the September CMF since new IP is mentioned. (I suspect B is the rumored K-Pop Demon Hunters sets and one of the others is supposedly a returning theme, but that still leaves a medium or large sized set) It seems prudent to bring up the possibility, since the biggest sticking point for IPs like Shrek and Narnia is “majorly important quadrupedal characters are too large to be a Minifigure accessory”, which having a tie in set would fix.

At the end of the day, both Star Wars and GotG have both gotten Christmas specials (even if the holiday was renamed in the rather infamous Star Wars offering). Ninjago hasn’t, and after so many years as one of LEGO’s in-house evergreen themes, I’m assuming there’s multiple reasons why it’s never had an advent calendar before. (One of those reasons probably has to do with the fact that none of LEGO’s more specialized in house themes have gotten advent calendars since they started doing them regularly.) And none of this really has anything to do with the rumors that Harry Potter won’t have an advent calendar this year.

Bring back the trans clear and trans green mug (from the Harry Potter polyjuice set) as green beer? Although the issue there might be Lego’s ‘no realistic/contemporary alcohol’ rule

Well, Cute Witch and Unicorn Elf, who we’ve already seen and can confirm is female (although the knowledge that she uses the Wonder Woman hair and tiara would still have been a giveaway even if we hadn’t seen a picture). Chocolatier might be more like to be a man because of the specific reference to Willy Wonka. Marine Biologist might also be a man because the last one was a woman (same thing happened with the zookeepers).

Uh… because the ninjas are culturally Japanese, Christianity is practiced by less than 1% of Japan’s population, and Christmas officially doesn’t exist in the Ninjago universe?

If it was a costume I’d expect it to be specifically identified as such like the Boba fan or Bionicle cosplayer. It’s not like we haven’t gotten plenty of robots in the past – we’re kinda overdue for one that’s a little more animalistic. I think the monster hunter is a coin flip between man (Van Helsing) and woman (Buffy Summers). Personally, I’d put better eyes on a girl considering the number of Buffy the Vampire Slayer submissions that have shown up on Ideas in recent years.