Portal Out

I finally predicted something correctly! Really crossing my fingers we get a Ganondorf minifigure; double crossed that he has the Avatar arms and legs to make him tall. I feel they could technically get away with not including him, but come on! That would be a certified “only the best is good enough” moment. Getting Link in a red tunic would be cool too since I feel like most people just wear that outfit until the end of the game once they unlock it, but I guess it would be pretty frustrating for people who don’t have the green Link from the Deku Tree.

A build of the final Ganon fight from the end of OoT that has a base with the ruins of Hyrule Castle and a bunch of flames would be a really good ~1000 piece set. If they included adult Link, adult Zelda, and Ganondorf, they wouldn’t need to make any new molds either.

Honestly I feel like Wind Waker has been one of the more heavily merchandised Zelda games in recent years. Like I barely see any Twilight Princess merch and certainly never see any Skyward Sword stuff, but just about every game stop I’ve been to has tons of toon Link plushies those World of Nintendo play sets. If/when we get another set, I still feel like getting something else from Oot or BotW is the most likely, but I wouldn’t rule Wind Waker out. I do wonder if Nintendo has given Lego any info on what the next Zelda is though. Probably not seeing as Lego leaked their big collab over a year early, but still interesting to speculate about.

Excited to see we’re getting close. Hopefully those prices haven’t been nudged too much.

Nicely done, you were just about spot on! Total mandela effect lol, for some reason I remembered them showing up there at the end of the live-action series.

Since we're making predictions: 301 Pieces - Buggy's Circus Tent Luffy, Zoro, Buggy Buggy is confirmed, but I can't really think of any substantial builds that he could come with, so I'm just guessing they'll throw him in the cheapest set. 573 Pieces - Kaya's Mansion Luffy, Usopp, Kaya, Kuro, Sham, Buchi The build is the interior of the mansion with some play features. Maybe there can be a bit of the exterior garden with the well. 926 Pieces - Arlong Park Arlong, Luffy, Nami, a few fishmen, Garp, Kobi The build is a shallow dollhouse type playset of the big pagoda and a few side builds. 1376 Pieces - The Baratie Luffy, Zoro, Usopp, Sanji, Nami, Zeff, Mihawk, a few chefs or pirates If one side is left open, they could definitely do the Batatie justice at this piece count. Mihawk's ship would also be nice to get in this set. 3402 Pieces - Going Merry Luffy, Zoro, Usopp, Sanji, Nami, Chopper, Nico Robin, Shanks Lego doesn't make sets above ~$250 for this kind of license unless they're based something extremely recognizable in general. I think the Merry is the only thing from the property that reaches that threshold. I'm shooting for the moon on this one and guessing it'll be based on the anime/manga. Oda is involved, and there's a bit of language in the press release that alludes to the anime specifically. Plus, Lego could hide a lot more references and easter eggs in a set based on the anime (which they love to do in their big sets). Most importantly, this set will almost definitely stay on shelves longer than the rest of the wave, and the Merry is the only thing not specifically tied to the first season of the live-action show. I kinda went crazy with the fig inclusions here and getting anything based on the anime is a stretch (no pun intended), but I'm going to lock in my guesses before we get any more leaks.

I feel like the mutant is a lock. Lego hasn’t missed one of these gimmick dinosaurs yet, and I don’t see any reason why they would this time. I’m personally not a big fan of the design though. They teased that it was inspired by the rancor and xenomorph… and it’s literally just a rancor with a xenomorph’s head. Let’s just hope its inevitable inclusion doesn’t push out one of the other newcomers. Either way, I’m super optimistic about this wave! There’s some great playset potential for sure.

Very nice, I really love a lot of the techniques you're using! Make sure to show us some glamor shots when you're done.

Yes, but I kinda just assume it’s non-lego since the OP clearly has other One Piece merch. Since we’re confirmed to be getting a Buggy set, I really hope we get a Cabaji fig. I don’t care about the character that much, but a unicycle piece would be awesome. Beast Tamer would be even cooler (especially if he had Richie), but he was barely in the live action show so that’s kind of a stretch.

Maybe it could be from a GWP or a polybag? Last year, Animal Crossing got a polybag with an exclusive character that had a new print and a new head mold recolor, so it wouldn’t be too far fetched. The only other option I can think of is that bar they show in a bunch of the flashbacks, and I don’t think they’d do that for obvious reasons.

Found it on Xitter, it was a pic of a Luffy figurine holding two of the straw hat/hair combos, one of which was red. Seemed legit to me, I figured anyone with unreleased pieces probably wouldn’t have any reason to photoshop it or anything.

Do you think an Animal Crossing D2C is in the cards for this year? The 72037 Mario D2C is coming in July and the Gameboy is coming in October (making the year already pretty full), but I feel like they’re definitely leaving money by not doing at least a small to medium sized 18+ set.

A hair/hat combo for Shanks leaked, glad to see he’ll be included somewhere. I feel like if any main side character were to be cut for space, it would’ve been him.

I hope the biggest set is the Baratie, that would be pretty perfect at ~1300 pieces. The leaked piece counts on all these are super substantial, so I've definitely got high hopes. The level of detail we've already seen for the figs is pretty exceptional and the prices seem almost too good to be true, so we honestly might have an all-timer on our hands. That little illustration from Eiichiro Oda implies that the sets are just based on the Netflix show, but the official press release specifically mentions anime, so I'd say it's like 50/50 that the D2C or something is anime based. There's no way they'd keep any of the main cast exclusive to the D2C, but it would also be lame for a 3500 piece set to have no exclusive minifigure; so including figs based on the designs from the anime in the D2C would be a pretty good solution imao. Brickheadz might also be a good way to include some representation from the anime, and I'd say Brickheadz are pretty likely from this theme.

Why doesn’t someone just reach out to this guy on Redbook? Ask him if he’s had any more specific One Piece dreams so that once photos get out, we can confirm if he’s got any intel. Honestly, he’ll probably just say that he’s got no information, which would clear things up even sooner. Odds are he doesn’t even know he’s got the rest of the world arguing. Who wants to break the story?

I see Bigs come up a lot in speculation, but com’on guys, no shot Lego would do a mold like that unless they’d done literally everyone else. He’s the JarJar of the Sonic franchise, and considering his size, we’d be lucky to get him with a molded head and brick built body before the theme expires. If we’re just going off patterns, Silver and Blaze seem like the next most likely to appear. Maybe Cream and Cheese since so they could reuse Cream’s head for Vanilla later. Eggman Nega could be in the pipeline too since he’s just a recolor, but he’s probably too obscure.

Call me crazy, but the buttons were always red in my mind. Looking at references, the magenta they went with is definitely accurate.So weird

Oh my gosh, the $70 set is a Gameboy! This is genuinely the best case scenario, I’m so excited. The teaser shows two purple studs really prominently, any idea what those could be for? Seeing those originally made me think it was going to be a SNES.

I feel like when it comes to Nintendo stuff, you kind of have to look past the sales figures in some cases. For example, Metroid has always been a fairly low selling franchise, but Samus and Riddley are super well know just because they've been around for so long and because of things like Smash. We're already kinda seeing Lego get this memo with Donkey Kong, whose last game still hasn't managed to crack 5 million in sales across 2 consoles and 10 years, but still got an entire wave of sets because he's a wildly popular character regardless. My hope is that this Deku Tree set is the gateway to getting annual one-off 18+ sets based of slightly smaller Nintendo IPs in the same way we get an annual Mario D2C now.

Supposedly the new Wallace and Gromit movie is premiering on Netflix later this year, maybe that release could be big enough to warrant a couple sets? I know Lego’s pretty wary of doing IP’s that aren’t globally popular, but I think it’s a fair candidate. This is kind of a long shot, but there’s also a Tomb Raider animated series coming this year on Netflix too. We don’t really know what angle they’re taking with it yet, so there’s a chance they could do a She-Ra thing and go after the tween girl demographic that these sets are supposedly targeting? Both of these are definitely stretching the info we have lol

I didn’t realize this at the time, but apparently the version of Rivendell from the survey leak actually has some differences from the final version that was released about a month later (mainly the waterfall). Since it’s been just under a year since the Deku Tree leaked and there’s still been no new pictures, I’d say that there’s a good chance it’s going to have some improvements as well. I’m pretty content with how both of the builds look already, but it’s exciting to think they might look even better by the time they’re actually revealed. Too much of a tinfoil hat theory? Maybe I’m just getting a little stir crazy waiting for more news

The Hocus Pocus Cottage released last year in July, so I think this July is a pretty safe bet for another Halloween themed Ideas release. The telephone booth from the same review wave is coming in February, so it’ll definitely be ready by then too!

Oh sweet, always fun to have a wildcard wave out there! The big 2024 movies that feel like the most likely candidates to me are probably Despicable Me 4 and that new Ghostbusters.

Neat, actual news! Let’s take this as an opportunity to move on from whatever the heck all the Nazi discourse was. Regardless, it looks like the seller is from Norway and is also selling a bunch of other one of a kind misprints; probably assembly line snags like we were seeing with Cody earlier this year. I wonder if there’s a chance of any of the figs surfacing…I secretly hope they don’t because seeing a Short Round fig that I’ll never be able to own might break my heart.

More of a Fortnite question than a Lego question, but this seems like a relevant place to ask it: Have they clarified whether any of the IP-based skins are getting the Lego treatment? I heard they're all ineligible to play with in the Lego mode for the time being, but have they outright confirmed that they're all being locked out of the mode entirely? Never played Fortnite in my life, I just need some closure on whether there's a even a minuscule chance of us seeing Metal Gear, Street Fighter, or Resident Evil minifigures. Even if they're just digital, seeing a Solid Snake minifig would make me the happiest person on the planet. Aside from Falcon Fan confirming that it won't be an early 2024 release, next to no info on the Zelda front :( Unless some news breaks in the next couple moths or we start seeing some of the other leaked sets begin to get release dates, even a summer release is beginning to feel a bit unlikely at this point (plus, they're probably going to want to give Fortnite the spotlight for a while).