Dorayaki

I'm not surprised to see Wiley's parts reused in other wild-type character, but I'm personally dissapointed with both Prospector and Space Miner being guys. Though maybe a female miner would be too similar with the Dino Tracker. I definitely like the Spooky Girl, but I'm not too sure about what the origin of this character is. According to Google, it's more related to American horror movie culture, is it? Dark lolita fashion is similar, but that is more delicate in clothes.

It's undertermined. As discussed, the main dissapointment is the lack of original prints that appeared in previous licensed sets. There is so far no official explanation for the budget allocation so far.

I assume that those discontinued prints wouldn't be brought back. TLC still has some TLM and City prints in their stock and this costs less.I personally suggest making a uniform for all three minifigures (similar with the pic in reply #110) in order to make all exclusive to this set.

Yes, it's been mentioned. I think the dilemma is that the CMF version was a typical one, but she didn't actually come with longer torso from Alatariel's suggestion. Now it's changed to a casual look and that idea is unable to come out. Sounds like a pity.

Not necessarily correct, but I can figure out some:1) Previous two licensed sets both have exclusive characters with new torso and face prints. This does lead us to expect more from future Ideas sets. Now I'm afriad this set isn't a good match for the Ghostbusters. The major difference is that the previous ones are licensed characters, while the ones we get this time are even not specific characters. Maybe it's a good excuse for TLG, or contrarily the licensed sets had extra budget because TLG believed that they can benefit more (even though there have been reused face prints from licesned characters like Padme Granger). 2) The initial purpose of this project was also to diversify our choices of female characters from official sets. If we can simply find used pieces (except that new torso) to recreate these minifigures right now, the effects would be weaker. I didn't expect too much too, but I'd ask one new hair color and two new torsos at least. Now this set is much like Creator sets: the building part is the true star and the minifigures are purely sidekicks. Maybe Alatariel could have assigned some rare combinations of faces and headpieces in order to make them more unique (like those from Ultra Agents), in case TLC would try to make them as generic as possible.

It's been discussed in CMF series 11, I'm not sure I like the new female scientist design even though the designers did try to make her different. I liked the original design with long robe and short legs. And I'm alittle disappoint that no original figure prints aka new minifigures come to appeal FOLs despite they're the first group of female LEGO Idea minifigures and this set was meant to show gender issues. Also, if this is a whole research lab, it may be nice to see all three come in"uniform" things. The rest building part is very close to the original design, I'm not too surprised and I guess I'll still be going to get them.

This is undetermined. If the study seriously imply the lack of female "minifigures" in the general LEGO world, judging from the lack of advertising, Friends minidolls aren't generally considered to be new female figure supplement pack for traditional themes, otherwise earlier girls-oriented themes (Scala & Belville) would have "solved" that problem. As mentioned earlier, action heroines do exist, but they're still the minority in the LEGO action themes. While I support action themes to add more female power, I'm against this study because they neglect the fact that each LEGO theme has different targeting market and they're not all for unisex. Well as far as I know it's been debated that LEGO TV ads featuring "neutral themes" seldom have girls join the play. Police, which consumers are mostly boys, wouldn't really introduce a girl fan.I'm a "yellow" Asian, so I'm not really with the debate of black and white. But I do feel awkward to see Ninjago fanarts always feature white skin guys (not even Asian-like despite ninjas are from Japanese culture). I think you may just say that the research found the minifigures aren't "appealing enough" to girls, not because they're ugly . And recent traditional minifigures have caught more attentions from girls by having more varieties (CMF series, action themes etc).

Okay, looks like there's no one leaving comments. Whatsoever, hope that you guys can make some comments on the new Friends episode before the return of our Overlord Ninjago Rebooted. It's surprising (and predictable) that two new official episodes have been declared online yesterday, much like episode 2 and 3 last year. But the question is does TLC decide to make two episodes at the same time every year and not make more of them? Now here is my comments along with other critiques by episode. Episode four: Country Girl Episode five: Emma Dilemma Mini Webisodes: Jungle series I think Friends TV episodes are trying to pull out their own stories outside the box of physical products, but on the other hand the products don't really reflect on the stories, much like Polly Pocket's early problem. Some of the advertisings are good, but I hope to see Friends try more things like what Ninjago and Chima do: adding original features to the products in correspondence of the story progress.

Just had time to watch the new videos, it's clear to see that the apps allow you to transform 2D to 3D and it turns out pretty well. Hope that we'll see more progress in the future. Offtopic, it's alittle sexist speaking, but despite it's nice to have an app for Friends, I found it disturbing to see the fourth ad Resort reluntantly assigned to be played by girls while all previous three apps feature the same boy. The LEGO commercial issue has been discussed for a long time, and this problem is obvious when Friends should be a member of the "matrix team". It would be better to see girls and boys play together in all ads of this series.

Okay, I just saw Shopping Mall and Jungle Sanctuary, in local deparement stores, I only picked animal series five.

It's hard to say. There have been more and more things technologies can do. One day it will not just be virtual and physical, there could be a new aspect between the two. Maybe all bricks and figures would be able to move and interact by themsevles just like Mindstorm does.Simply judging from the tablet idea, I think it should appeal those who plays clicks more than bricks, not the traditional brick lovers. Our new generation is addicted to those things so it may bring positive affects to them. Yeah, not surprising. I remain both sceptical and interested. It's just the first step and there is still room for progress to reach the ultimate goal to fully transfer all freedom and creativity from physical to virtual. For now only judging from the building part, the phsyical wins over virtual.

Well so according to previous topics, does this count a Town topic? It's indeed a great idea for souvenir

In Taiwan, as I can remember: S1: almost 2€ S8~Simpsons: 2.4€ (no increases) Looks like the chance of a whole new jester is pretty small. A new color palette and new devil sticks are predictable.

It could be interesting if we may build our own physical cars and then race in a virtual large world. As others said this has to depend on how phsyicals converts to virtuals in this app. The phsyical bricks are very few, and it looks like the the app would capture the shape and then "aggrandize" it into a magnificant and detailed building. It looks like the playable(interactable) characters in the virtual side are all assigned, while racers and the wizard don't appear phsyically. I guess we can't use a Friends character to join the race. . I'm curious too. In other aspects, what if we build something that isn't from the specific theme, for example, a little castle in a Town/Friends set? Would each app and each plate show different results? If not, we may just buy one set for the plate, use our own other bricks and download all apps.

Uhmmm these faces look really great, though abit off, and I want most of the prints. I wonder if skin colors could be different: though they're not specific characters, they do have cultural backgrounds (while the official GB team didn't use flesh colors). Also it's alittle lazy to make all the female figures use the same face, despite they're not the actual members of the world cup teams. I'll look foward to know if I need this site. Thanx for sharing.

I think this article did come up with several important issues that TLC should face, however it neglects some marketing factors and the purposes of products designs, resulting in a somewhat arbitrary critisism. Some problems have been solved in newer themes, for example, CMF series solved the gender role problem, and Friends satisfies the needs of brick colors..If they could review every major theme and make some concrete suggestions, it can be closer to perfection. The reply from TLC below is mostly postive and appropriate (hopefully they'll take it into practice). But I would disagree with some points: > Lots of strong women and girls live in LEGO City We do see some progress these years, but perhaps we've not reached the goal. Also, one possible problem is that the ladies scarcely get the highlights in ads. > features Wyldstyle as a main character Uh, let's neglect Uni-Kitty first, yes, indeed TLG have been adding heroines to each action themes, but the gender ratio in action themes is probably even worse than the City line. Nobody hates Eris, Nya or Wyldstyle, but the fact is that they're the only common visible lady minifig member in their own teams.

Well, high school romance-comedy is not a bad try, though I guess not all Japanese moe-style arts really fit in common LEGO. I may suggest to make some updates for your artworks or find other stories that fit better in LEGO. Ami's hair might be better with the old Hermione, I assume.

Just great! These look like what the official should have done.

Great work, it shows that many of the Friends building sets have potential to be modular. I'd like to see a beach or lake layout too.

Uh okay. Thanx to SilentMode again for reveaing another WINNER. It looks like there is no definite connections between the winning minifigure and the set where the instruction belongs to, though Friends might just stay in their own instructions and you won't see Emma be the winner of a Ninjago instruction. I wonder how TLC would deal with the licensed instructions. (Vader wins?)

We need evil phycho jesters as our rivals to existed royal jesters. Pretty nice, it does look like a better match for this series.

I think there could be several issues. This game is a crossover fantasy so each world would have different kinds of monsters and villains. The Maelstrom stromlings from LEGO Universe had a rather unified color palette. Even if they may have different appearances, you may easily differ them from normal human. Actually newcomers who aren't familiar with LEGO products and CMF series yet might be confused when seeing a CMF monster fighting a nonplayable monster.Also, if the purpose is to market the "heroes" minifigures, making the nonplayable villains or NPCs too apealing might result in a misdirection. Therefore I guess the designs can't be too generic, but also not too unique to be a real CMF?

There was already a heat debate for The LEGO Movie. To make it short, yes, we know there are official evidence showing that LEGO themes are connected, or in a different view, we can put them together physically. The main problem that might also happen in other comic omniverse is, there are multiple different official crossover canons. LEGO Universe, despite bring one of them, seems to be obviously different from the others. The Clutch Powers showed a very tradtional way of how LEGO theme are connected. The LEGO Movie is the crazisest and the most fantasy-like version of crossover so far. I don't think Ninjago is not connected, the background Ninjago City can simply be one of the regions on the LEGO world. Also Clutch had been referred in the cartoon once.

Recently, I also heard a little girl call LEGO to a Hello Kitty box set made by Oxford at my local ToyRUs. I guess those cometitor brands (Hasbro, Mattel) would also not want their potential consumers to call their own products LEGO, as long as they're starting to step up their own games. The LEGO Movie was a good approach for TLC to market products which excatly have the reddish LEGO logo on. The audience would pay more attention to the official LEGO characters. Even if Transformers and Hello Kitty are still popular, kids would get to know "they're no LEGO". Unless the contention over licenses might lead to consumers' confusion (eg, Spongebob is now on MB's hand, but some could mistake them as "an update from LEGO"). I'd like to say there are rare cases like OYO. Those brands don't intend to be copycats, but their limited range of products would have to rely on the "leading brands". Oh, for Nanoblok, which is a subbrand of Diablok. Most of their designs are very different from LEGO's range. I recently ran into a series of articles talking about their early history. Their early products were also Town-related, but now they only focus on a cuter miniature version of Creator concepts. I quite like their own Hello Kitty products designs which is far from Megabloks or Oxford but also brings a fresh air to the toy market.

Well if you guys don't mind, I recommend you to take a look at Friends animation advertisings first and comment there. It's offtopic so make it short here, as long as major LEGO products don't target at teenagers (13yo and above), the "mean girl party" could mislead underages and make negative marketing effects. The criminals and monsters from other LEGO themes have simpler concepts, and they do physically affect the product designs (weapons, etc).I'd say that I was dissapointed to not see Friends harassed by SWAT in TLM, but the theme doesn't need literal bad guys in general. Meanwhile, Disney stories and some other LEGO licenses are mostly theatrical. They need some fighting enemies for dramatic visual effects, and these characters are more similar with criminals and monsters, rather than "mean people". Ignoring those details can be ragarded as a disrespect to the story and its fans. Plus, TLG had introduced bad witches in earlier themes, I guess the licensed bad witches wouldn't create any issue.