Kit Figsto

I know you weren't responding to me directly, but I did want to clarify one point, I'm not 100% against licensed Ideas submissions, but I think that there is a clear difference between "this would actually make a cool set because this thing is an interesting design" and "I want the minifigures from X movie so I'm going to make a $200 set based around it." I myself have wanted to put in a licensed Ideas submission for a while, I just don't have the time to dedicate to actually build it (ironically, it's also a house, from Kim Possible, though I maintain that the design would lend itself to an interesting set, even though I am highly doubtful that it would pass review). I kind of agree with the points made about the National Lampoon's house - it's VERY similar to the Home Alone house that's already out, but I'd argue that the Home Alone house is a lot more famous of a movie location and offers more potentially interesting stuff happening on the interior. I just have gotten bored of the meta of "take a popular licensed property, make a very large build out of it, and then spam it to Reddit/message boards for that IP" since it feels that's been going on for 5+ years now. I own multiple licensed Ideas sets - the Cuusoo DeLorean, the original Ecto-1, the Pooh Bear house (which is a fantastic set), but I feel as if those sets coming out at a time when we weren't getting nearly as many Icons sets made the Ideas process much more interesting to me. It felt like for a licensed property to get 10k, it had to be something really interesting, and it didn't necessarily have to be this huge thing. We've gotten 40 licensed Ideas sets total in the 15 years that the program has been around, 23 of which came in the last 5 years. However, of those 23, we've had 4 that were less than $100 (Sonic at $80, the Polaroid camera at $80, the Pixar lamp at $70, and Snoopy at $90). Contrast that with the first ten years of the program, where EVERYTHING with the exception of Voltron and Sesame Street were under $100, including 4 sets that were actually under $40. Like, even the Big Bang living room was only a $60 set, whereas all of the TV sets that we've gotten since then have been enormous, even though they're basically representing the same thing that one did. I guess what I'm getting at is that I don't think licensed = bad, but it's felt really redundant to me. That's partially a critique of some of the submissions, and partially on LEGO, because I can pretty much guarantee that if the submission had been the National Lampoon's RV instead of the house, that it wouldn't have gotten through. They clearly want huge sets, so people are responding accordingly. I don't fault people for wanting their favorite movie/TV show/book/comic series made in LEGO format, but sometimes it feels to me, like, do we really NEED a $200 set of this? That part, to me, is on LEGO.

I've become a lot more interested in BDP in recent years than Ideas. For one thing, every Ideas set at this point is like $100+ and licensed, so it's basically indistinguishable from the normal, $100+ licensed stuff that's already out. Is the current Jaws set on shelves from Ideas? I genuinly have no idea, it might be, it might not be. Point being, it felt a lot more "special" when they weren't making a licensed set of every single pop culture property ever. The Snoopy set that's coming out/came out recently (and I think is Ideas?) looks great, but I can pretty much guarantee that they would've made that within the next 5 years anyway had an Ideas project not gotten any traction there. The second part is that it feels like half of the submissions are just people clout chasing without giving any consideration whatsoever to what would actually make a good set. A lot of stuff is either bigger than it needs to be (mostly some of the minifigure-based sets) or is a great MOC but is way too big/lacking in features to actually be a good set. I skimmed through the most recent review list and five projects jumped out at me to where I thought "Huh, I actually want to see more of this" - the penguin zoo, the modular medieval village, the 1800s train, the working volcano, and the Clash Royale one (mostly because I was curious how they represented that in LEGO form). Probably two thirds of them are licensed, which I feel is just turning into "ways to get minifigures made from properties that people like" rather than people actually wanting the set made. I think there's some great builds out there, but not every build needs to be part of the Ideas system. I realize that a lot of these get filtered out in the review process, but it just seems kind of pointless when half of the sets in a review have no chance from the start. Anyway, with BDP, getting those giant MOC-like sets made is kind of the point, since it doesn't really need to be a viable product on store shelves, so I think it's cool to see what people come up with from their own creativity with fewer limitations on what they can and can't do.

I think the issue with the large Icons sets are that, while cool in theory, it's putting all of the eggs in one basket regarding representing that theme. I'm going to use myself as an example here, but I really like certain aspects of classic Castle, Space, and Pirates, but I wouldn't say that I am 100% a fan of each theme. There's been a few of the Icons sets that I've really liked the idea of, but they either weren't appealing enough for me to shell out the price (like, Eldorado Fortress was very cool, but I didn't like it enough to spend $200), or they aren't really where my interest lies (the Galaxy Explorer was objectively a well-designed set, but my Space interest mostly lies in Ice Planet, Space Police, Spyrius, and the 2000s themes - yes, I know that's blasphemous to some classic Space aficianados ). I'm sort of straying from your point here, but it just got me thinking, I think even if we are looking at set sales data (and I agree with your analysis that the Galaxy Explorer probably did well enough, otherwise they wouldn't have continued doing Icons sets), I don't think it's fair to say "Well, the Renegade didn't sell well, so therefore the whole Icons line isn't selling" because there could be plenty of other factors causing people to not buy the Blacktron set besides just a lack of interest in the theme. That would be like Star Wars releasing ONLY a Millennium Falcon, and then people saying that the line isn't selling well because people don't need to buy 5 copies of that one ship. That said, do I think that a full-fledged reboot of Pirates, Castle, or Space would do well? Maybe. I think it would depend heavily on how it was done, and how it was marketed, but I think we as the consumers don't really know enough to say that it would for sure do well , or would for sure flop. We can look at examples and say that it would do well (the CMF Wolfpack guy being impossible to find, BDP sets of classic themes being the most sought-after, etc.), or we can look at counter-examples and say it would fail (Castle and Pirates both got reboots in the 2010s during the period when themes like Friends and Ninjago did well enough to become evergreen themes, but neither stuck around for more than a wave or two). The only thing that I'm fairly certain of is that if they were convinced it would print money, they would've done it by now, and perhaps they're not willing to risk a line failing, and instead would rather take their risk on stuff that could have a greater possible reward outcome (stuff like Mario or the Smart Brick, though the jury is still out on the second one).

Yes and no, I don't think it's inherently the licensed stuff, but I think it's more that LEGO, to me, feels like they are trending away from the creative aspect that was a major part of their ethos for so long (and basically the entire plot of the LEGO Movie). To me, there is a much higher emphasis on sets to be accurate and displayable versus rebuildable. I know that the alternate builds on boxes have been gone for almost 25 years now, but it feels like nearly a third of LEGO's product line consists of sets where the only photos of the set are just it on display. There's no suggestion of rebuilding it, it's just "build this thing and put it on a shelf." This is just my personal opinion, but I've become a lot more disillusioned with the new practice of so many LEGO sets just being "real world object, except it's LEGO!" (and sometimes costing more than actually just buying the thing it represents in the first place). I don't think that licensed sets are inherently bad (I own and enjoy plenty of them!), but I don't think every pop culture property needs to be LEGO-fied, especially as it feels like this pulled the focus away from the type of sets that I grew up enjoying.

I'm referring more to the stuff that is display-only, as in the buildable statue of Chewbacca or the Disney camera and things - stuff that doesn't contain any inherent play value beyond just building it. There are certainly unlicensed examples here (botanicals, for example), but City or Friends doesn't have dioramas the same way that a lot of the major licensed themes currently do. I agree completely with all of your points, and I think you put it better than I could've - it seems harder these days to amass a collection of basic bricks to build most anything with. I'm not saying it's bad that we have a larger palate of colors and shapes, but there's certain bricks that just don't feel...entirely necessary, sometimes? It's okay to me to have a build where it's not 100% accurate to the source material, and have studs exposed or wing shapes that may not be totally the same as the real thing. Do I want a build to be super blocky? Not necessarily, but I also don't need everything to look 100% sleek and polished.

This is a fair take, and I want to make it clear that my original post wasn't meant to say that people are in the wrong for buying/enjoying the one-off 18+ display stuff, or that you're only a "true fan" if you disassemble and rebuild your stuff. I've had the MBS Mos Eisley Cantina on display since it came out (which included transporting it intact while moving, which was...interesting, to say the least), and I've had plenty of sets that I've built, put back in the box, and don't really rebuild every time I want to get it out and mess with it. I think the crux of my argument is that I personally feel like LEGO has leaned into the 18+ market too much, and in doing so, has moved away from the ethos that made them great in the first place. The 80s, 90s, 2000s, and even early 2010s get romanticized a lot among LEGO fans (depending on your generation) and I think part of that is because it felt like, even after they went away from alternate models or leaned more into licensed themes, there was still this element of creativity that permeated throughout the sets and themes. I just don't see that anymore when every set is made up of more and more specialized parts, there's zero exposed studs, and we're in the territory where things outside of the "core" play themes is dominated by larger price point sets or more display-oriented models. Target stores in the US now usually have 2 LEGO aisles - from what I see, it's usually one full aisle on both sides, and then another half aisle, and I would say usually the entire half aisle is black-box stuff. That's around one third of the product line on shelves devoted to stuff that's $100 and up. Then, you take out the Duplo/4+ stuff, as well as the display pieces in stuff like Harry Potter, Star Wars, or other licensed themes, and you're left with around half of the line that's focused more on the "creative" side, in my opinion - playability, rebuilding being encouraged, etc. Just not my cup of tea, but of course, it's just my take. If someone enjoys the 18+ statues, by all means, buy it and enjoy it! I agree here, like I said, I grew up playing with Star Wars or Indiana Jones, and I remember having a ton of fun building scenes from the movies that weren't represented in sets yet, or putting together a huge clone base or whatever. It just feels like now, the licensed stuff is more focused on it being a display piece that there's barely any sets left where kids can have that same experience. Heck, most of the Star Wars stuff available other than battle packs are like $40-$60 minimum for a small/medium sized ship, but that's a separate issue altogether.

I don't know if this is even that unpopular, but I think LEGO as a company feels completely different in the post-COVID world than it did for most of my childhood (2000s + 2010s). To be clear, I think that the actual designs of sets is generally pretty top-notch - accurate to the source material, usually some creative/well-thought out play features, and structurally sound. There are exceptions to this for sure (sometimes I think just because the source material doesn't translate well to LEGO, and sometimes just because of the fiasco that was the Juggernaut last summer), but for the most part, I think that the designers do a great job. Where I find myself feeling more and more disinterested is that it feels like LEGO currently is just "Thing - but LEGO! (and it costs $400)" for, like, 50% of their sets. I just don't see any of the creativity, outside of stuff like City or some of the in-house themes anymore. I'm not even talking about this as a licensed vs. unlicensed debate - I grew up playing with LEGO Star Wars, Prince of Persia (perhaps this is an actual unpopular, opinion but that wave of sets was truly fantastic and is heavily overlooked these days) and Indiana Jones (and I still do!) just as much as I played with Aqua Raiders, Exo-Force, or Castle. My problem mostly lies in that all of these sets, whether licensed or unlicensed, felt like I was getting a box of pieces that could build the main model, but could also be rebuilt into whatever I wanted. If I bought a fire truck, I could use those to make another kind of fire truck, or an ambulance, or some other vehicle. If I bought a TIE Fighter, I could build another spaceship, or some sort of Imperial command post out of it. This sort of hit me as I was looking at the Pokemon starter set. I've never been a Pokemon guy, so I don't have any attachment to the property or the sets, but I was, and still am, just shocked that it's $650 for essentially 3 6-inch figurines and a large base. Even if they were $150 each, I don't see the value at all. This is partially because the size (I feel like we just get less and less "stuff" in sets these days, even if the price/piece ratio has remained somewhat consistent), but partially because I don't see these sets are any different from just buying an action figure or plastic model of the same thing. I'm finding Charizard statues for $50-60 online that look to be around the same size. Do you get to build it? No, but is that even the point anymore? I would bet 95% of people that are buying the black-box sets are building them once and displaying them - perhaps only taking it apart to put it in storage or move or whatever. This isn't me saying customers are wrong - what has LEGO done that would make you want to rebuild it? It's now hundreds/thousands of small plates or bits, many of which are new specialized parts that can't really easily be reused outside of the context that they're created for. I remember when putting out a new part was a big deal (to me, a 1x2 cheese slope is still a new-ish part), now it seems like I'll buy a $30 set and it's got like 5 parts that I've never seen before, only for me to find out that they've been around for two years. Call me cynical, but that's a lot different than dumping out the pieces from a police station and trying to make something new out of it. Another example of what I'm talking about was the Foosball table - it was like $300, when I can get an actual, working table for $150. The Polaroid camera is like $70, and it looks like I can get a new one on sale at Best Buy for $80. Why do these sets need to be so expensive? Has anyone honestly asked for some of this stuff? Obviously it's selling well enough if they're making it, but at what point does the novelty wear off and people get sick of shelling out thousands and thousands on plastic display pieces. Anyway, I saw a comment the other day regarding the new Star Wars set reveals, and they were saying that in the 80s/90s/2000s, LEGO sets/themes felt like they were creating worlds, whereas now, it feels like simply a medium, and that sums up my feelings.

I was just at Target today and was in the LEGO aisle looking at the post-Christmas carnage. What was really interesting is that at both the location I was at, as well as another location that I visited two days ago, the aisles were completely bare save for some of the black-box 18+ stuff and a few random sets here and there. The main exception that I saw today? The 2025 Star Wars wave. They had probably 15 of the Hot Rod Snowspeeder, 2-3 each of the MTT and CTT, about 8 V-19s, and a handful of Jango ships. My hope is that this is due to people not buying because of insane pricing. I've said many times, I'm not against downscaling (the 2021 X-Wing/TIE were great in that regard) but we can't also be jacking the prices up to insane values and still expect customers to buy it.

Knowing how these things usually go, we’ll go the DC route and get a Brickheadz two pack, a $400 Krusty Krab (gotta tap into the nostalgia bait market), a brick-built Spongebob statue (not a remake of the Build-A-Bob, though), and a 4+ Spongebob’s house that’s the best set in the wave. (Can you tell I’ve become a bit cynical about LEGO in recent months? ) In all seriousness, I’d love a return to the playsets. I think a black-box Krusty Krab has been pretty much inevitable at some point, but I’m hoping if they did bring back Spongebob, that we’d get at least a 3-4 set wave of playsets.

Ah, I got a few of those years wrong - in my defense, I was going off the top of my head, rather than actually checking Brickset But yes, I own the MBS version, as well as both the 2014 and 2018 versions, because the scene is one of my favorites (perhaps my favorite) from the entire franchise. While I don't know if I'd shell out $70 or whatever is being charged for the new one for just one new minifigure, I think I'd be very tempted to buy the set and sell off the repeat figs or something.

I pretty much agree. Unless I'm forgetting one, I think we've had 4 versions of the Cantina. The 2003 version was definitely the weakest as far as the actual building - I'm pretty sure that the Landspeeder took up more of the piece count, but for the era and size, it was fine. The 2014 version pretty much set the standard for a large playset version, and I think it still holds up completely fine. The only new thing we got was the band, but it was also a much larger cantina, so I think it worked perfectly for he price and scale. The 2019 version, while smaller, was totally fine for the price point. It got the point across, and we got a new Wuher and speeder. I look at that one as a spiritual successor to the 2003 version, while the MBS version is more of a successor to the 2014 version. Obviously that one can't really be classified in the same way, but I believe it had 7 new characters plus a new speeder. I definitely agree on the new one - I'm surprised that there's not something new (Snaggletooth!) coming here to incentivize those with the MBS set or other previous versions to put down the money for a new one. At the very least, they could throw in Ponda Baba, because I don't think he should be locked behind a $350 (retired) paywall.

This is kind of my take on it as well. I'm pretty sure that I own a total of one classic Space/Castle/Pirates set (it was before my time), but there is a LOT from that era that I'd love to own, I just can't justify the price in most cases. This problem presents itself again when most of the remake sets have been $200+, the exceptions being the two space sets, both of which looked nice to me, but not enough to spend $100. I am a little bummed that I missed the Black Friday Amazon deal for the Renegade, as $54 would've been more than okay with me, but oh well. The Eldorado Fortress and Lion Knight's Castle both are/were of interest to me, but I have neither the space nor the disposable income to buy something that's, say, a 6/10 on the "interest" scale for me. I feel as if there's a bit of a paradox here - more people would be interested in the classic remakes/classic style sets if they put out waves of smaller sets (like the 2013 Castle or 2015 Pirates), but the interest level in those waves appears to be too low to justify actually making them - with the amount of new sets and licenses that LEGO's pumping out these days, I can pretty much guarantee that they'd have done a Castle/Pirates theme if it was profitable, and I'm, sure there's no shortage of designers in the company that would jump at the chance to work on a project like that. I've actually really enjoyed bot h the Forest Hideout and Blacktron Cruiser GWP (though I know a lot of people had mixed feelings on them), and I think that size is great. I got the Cruiser for like $30, which felt fair, and I got the Forest Hideout as the GWP when I bought a couple of sets that I'd been waiting on purchasing, though again, I'd have been okay buying that for $20-25.

I would agree. I've noticed a lot of people on Instagram/YouTube/Reddit (especially LSW collectors) have started to not fully attach the torsos to the legs to prevent cracking. I just think the idea of using this toy as an investment that you have to preserve is, well, a bit silly. Why not enjoy it as it's meant to be enjoyed? I've been collecting LEGO for about 20 years now and I've only come across two torsos that have cracked - one was from a set from 2005 that I've owned for 20 years, and the other was a late 90s Arctic set that I bought sealed last year on eBay and was probably stored in a hot attic/garage, because the tires were very goopy, one of the minifigures' arms basically exploded when I tried to move it, and one of the 1x2 grill tiles also had the middle bar piece snap. It's unfortunate when that happens, but at the end of the day, it is what it is.

I'm guessing 2007, as it shows the two flagship sets from the first wave of Fantasy Era which would've been from that year. I also noticed just now that there's trolls in the top right, which use the exact same design as the trolls that we did get. So, I think it's probable that an elf (maybe forestmen inspired?) wave was planned but scrapped, for whatever reason.

Interesting - I'd never seen this! In fairness, it's possible that an Elf wave of Fantasy Era was planned but was never made due to the theme ending, since we did get Dwarves for the second wave.