MAB

Why not? If it involves castles, I wouldn't mind LEGO making a more diverse theme to include more than just a few hundred years of European history. It might even help sales to diversify from the Euro-centric medieval period.

Castle doesn't have to be medieval. Gothic Victorian would do me fine.

The city type views I remember seeing in places with dense populations in Australia are not so different to those in Europe or North America. For me, City is just as Australian as it is British, Danish, German or American. Friends is probably more Australian than British, seeing as they seem to live where it is always sunny and have a very outdoor lifestyle!

I'm not sure it is fair to compare new small parts that will appear in a large number of sets that sell in huge numbers with parts for trains, especially for exclusive use in trains. An 11 long half width liftarm is probably somewhere in the middle of these extremes. How many sets does LEGO actually need to use that part in and is it cost effective to introduce it? New wheels are something different. It is easy to design a new hand-held accessory for a minifigure. They know the correct diameter for the bar part to hold it, then it is just down to getting a good shape and it will work. Whereas, in comparison, a new system of train wheels would be a huge investment of testing to ensure that they work properly on existing tracks. Especially when, for most people aside from the ultra-serious that want very realistic detail, they have an existing working set of train wheels that look fine for many trains.

I think for something like that to work, they have to both get the story right (as in interesting) and make sure users can engage with the story, which is often a problem as the cartoons are rarely freely accessible in all countries. Otherwise if people's favourite heroes just disappear from sets, there is less continuity and hence buy in and the sets appear to be a somewhat random mixture. One of the good things about Ninjago is that you can pick any set in any era and you can identify the heroes and villains, even if you don't know the story arc. If sets are heavily linked to a story, they need to make sure everyone gets access to the story.

They are only removed if reported, so if you don't report the other ones then they can stay. BL don't actively search for infringing items, they just act on reports.

Is that because they are tall though, or because of the modern designs? Stick a short version of the Shard in Prague and it will also not look great. Whereas stick 3 or 4 or more skyscrapers together and they fit in to the area OK. Singapore manages it quite well.

Personally, if they had only dark style elves, then it would probably put me off buying them as elves as the elf heads / hair / torso parts would be less useful than traditional elves. They would have to invest in a good storyline to get people onboard. As to numbers of factions, Chima had lions, eagles, gorillas, bears, beavers, rhinos, crocs, ravens and wolves all introduced in the first season. I don't think kids found it difficult to follow, my son was 6-7 at the time he watched it and was able to follow the story perfectly well.

Elves and men tend to be allies in most fiction don't they? As not having an antagonist is also not really practical. Just about all similar LEGO themes have not just conflict but also these days tend to make it clear which faction is good and which is evil. I think humans and elves are unlikely, unless the elves are made to be some sort of dark elf and that might not be great for kids - or indeed for AFOLs wanting more elves.

I thought the dragons were great. But not the crowns/lions (they couldn't even be consistent there). They were also on shelves just after the Evil Knight (boar) from CMF. Given the similar colour schemes, these could be used as a friendly faction for the dragon knights.

I agree, although LEGO tends to be relatively stingy with animals like horses. I guess the cost is comparatively high per part compared to brick built animals such as dragons (like those in Elves and Ninjago). I agree we would want any sets to sell well (to kids) but what helps that happen often means AFOLs complain especially concerning catapults or similar (flick missiles / toilet roll throwers). A battering ram would be interesting, but it does mean any doors have to fit the gap to enable them to be battered open and presumably do so with out breaking clips. If they cannot be used for battering, then they lose the action part. Whereas a catapult / toilet roll thrower does little damage to parts. Although none of it really requires a tie-in story, any more than Castle sets of old to define factions.

It is not necessary for us, but is it necessary for LEGO? Think about what they did in 2013 - every set has a vehicle, along with AFOL complaints that they wasted parts on vehicles. Look at what they do with Ninjago. Nearly all sets (aside from spinner type sets) are vehicles or mechs, aside from the occasional (and much more AFOL appreciated) location based sets. Someone at LEGO thinks vehicles are necessary.

One of the things often said about LEGO aimed at kids is that vehicles sell. So many sets have vehicles where they are (to AFOLs) unnecessary, whether in-house Ninjago style sets or Superheroes (The Mandarin in a golf cart, and so on). So I don't think it is easy to not do loads of vehicles. I've got the impression that AFOLs don't like siege engines. They often seem to draw complaints.

I find it a bit boring. I don't think being white helps there. Tan at least makes it a bit warmer looking. I also don't like the expanse of glass on the front, but glass in much thicker supports on the sides. It looks a bit odd, mixing framless windows with heavily framed. I think it would look better using some of the building colour (so white here) between the front glass panels, either window frames or just a row of plates to break up those panels.

I also think this is important. One skyscraper looks weird on its own. Combined with others, they fit in better. Also scale - a skyscraper doesn't have to be incredibly tall in a LEGO city. Often five stories is enough to convey that it is a skyscraper, different to the other shorter buildings. Modulars are all very small volume wise compared to real structures, and the same can work for skyscrapers too. They may not physically be skyscrapers any more, but if you want them to be relatively tall and modernist builds, that is often enough.

It is not surprising that there is not much designed only for Australians, when you consider populations. Population of Australia: 25M Population of Europe: 750M Population of North America: 580M However, there have been two Sydney Opera Houses already, and a Sydney skyline. There was also this:

In other words, repeat Ninjago with knights instead of ninjas vs every faction that can be thought up. However, it misses out the builds, and builds are important. Ninjago had a lot of vehicles, how would they fit in?

No, I think they are castle. My response was that anyone that doesn't think they are true Castle has a personal bias against them.

I don't care about a story as stories can be ignored. I'd care about what influence it had on the parts produced. If it meant that any knights were done in red, blue, yellow and green parts, different colours for each, then I (and no doubt others) wouldn't buy the sets. Does this mean the story had ruined the theme, or would they have done the same thing without a story? Same with fantasy vs non-fantasy. I don't really see the existence of a story as being important. If they do a story based fantasy theme with a dragon, for example, it is likely to contain the same elements as a non-story based fantasy theme with a dragon. So people wanting fantasy based sets will probably want fantasy based stories, whereas people wanting more realistic castle will presumably want non-fantasy based stories.

It looks nice and will no doubt get votes from people that want more horses in small sets too. Is there any reason for the choice of windows, as those 1x1x2 haven't been used for about 40 years? The front axle also looks a bit static, compared to the LR one LEGO did at the same scale:

As a theme, I will go for Elves as better than expected. There were some fantastic fantasy sets, a decent core of minifigures that were not ruined by specific "branding" so could also be used as army builders and some good adversaries. But the sets were great too, really beautiful. There were still a couple of things that let it down. I think it would have been better to have had two male and two female lead elves. It was often seen as a girls' theme but a small change might have helped there. The colours were quite different to most other fantasy themes (in that they were colourful!) but were still dark enough to be not necessarily overly girly / pink (however you want to put it). I'm glad I have a daughter, as otherwise they would probably have passed me by. And as a set, Saturn V for me is also better than expected. It is one I knew was a great display model. But the build itself is also very enjoyable and lots of surprising techniques.

Yes, but this is a very different issue. If you get crap in secondhand LEGO, someone has not done a very good job of sorting out the rubbish. In this case, it is new LEGO direct from LEGO. Having contaminants in it is an indication of failure somewhere in the production process and they should definitely be informed about it.

Blacksmith torso is OOS for UK. I got an email from brickhawk about it, and it was not in stock just minutes later when I checked. So maybe it is checking stock in a different location and there wasn't any stock for UK. Or I just missed it.

Purely personal bias and possibly one of the reasons we have had a long break from Castle. If fans of Castle are not buying sets like Joust or MVR as they do not believe it is true Castle, then the lack of Castle is understandable. Just based on other existing vidiyo figs, I imagine they will have some sort of music details or very bright colours. They are meant to appeal to young kids, after all.

It sounds like it will be pink and turquoise rather than grey. And I somehow doubt there will be usable historic style figures.