MAB

Constraction would compete with the licensed buildable figures in SW though. Although that may be a reason to get rid of them, as many Lego SW fans don't like them (aside from the non-human head ones like Vader and stormtroopers). If there is a business case for a new constraction line, it could run alongside any other big bang themes anyway, as the fan base is different enough.

The current UK TRU discounts on LEGO are nothing special. Since they increase their prices over RRP, the discount takes it down to only just below RRP, occasionally slightly better. But not as good as most other stores will do during their regular sales.

Nice. 1997 is especially good but sad.

What do I think would sell? Something along the lines of a re-hash of 2010 Kingdoms or any one year of Fantasy Era. So something like a 1000 piece castle _with panels_ as the flagship set - so equivalent to the old King's Castle - with two further buildings sets, one a goodies' building (makes a good substitute castle if they cannot afford the actual castle) and the other a baddies' building - so equivalents of outpost attack and prison tower from kingdoms or drawbridge defence or tower raid from fantasy era - then a couple of small vehicle sets, something like a carriage for the king and a siege tower or more likely a catapult or ballista for the baddies, and hopefully a battle pack. If we are lucky, maybe a dragon or a troll or some other large creature in one of the sets. Retain the castle for two more years, with a couple of new buildings sets (~250-500 piece, similar to the towers) in the second year and maybe build up to something like MMV after three years if year 1 was popular, supplemented with a couple more smaller sets that year. But I wouldn't go any more adult aimed for techniques than MMV, which was 12+. Then repeat the cycle but changing the theme so if originally medieval, go to fantasy or similar. So pretty much like the decade 2003-2013. Kid focussed for techniques and play features, similar sets in each theme across the range of price points. No doubt adults wouldn't like the castles, not realistic enough and too many panels, but these make building relatively quick and easy for the kids, and mean that they don't have to pester parents to help (as not all adults want to have to help their kids). The towers or other buildings would probably be more popular than the castle with adults if they contained bricks for MOCing. The vehicles would be completely shunned by adults as totally unnecessary but loved by kids for play value.

Presumably when / if the movies end and/or sales drop, whatever comes sooner.

So would the figures be plain, but identifiable as a knight by placing on a breastplate / armour and helmet? And you could remove that a put on a different helmet and he is now a spaceman? Or would the figures in space settings be identifiable as spacemen by whatever their torso prints are? Yes, that's true. Although they'd have the problem that if one bombs, then the sets are already designed and manufactured anyway. But then they have that problem anyway if they have no connection, just different character names. Then all that is needed is for them to go back to doing some other in-house themes.

I guess they do limit their horizons somewhat by calling a theme (for example) Pharoah's Quest as it limits it to deal with something to do with Ancient Egypt. But it doesn't matter if it is a one year and done type theme, since it was limited to that subject anyway before moving on to a dramatically different next one. Although, to be honest, I'm not normally that bothered by the name and branding. I would have been perfectly happy if they had put all of their one year themes under a single banner, with the theme name as a sub-theme. All it really does (for me) is mean they get put in the same parent directory at bricklink, brickset, etc.

No I don't. It's every idea to have the Castle theme primarily aimed at adults rather than children.

Lego are still competitive. There are still the world's number one toy company and made $2 billion. They just had very good 2015 and 2016 and that growth hasn't continued for 2017 as they had hoped.

Some of those counted as blue are to blue what the pinks are to red though. Although I'd like sand red again too, it makes a lovely faded brick colour and is also good for pink marble.

I prefer the original. This one, even though it has medals, loses detail around the collar and especially at the bottom of the jacket. The straight white line is not as good as the original detailing. Similarly, the lack of detailing on the belt. And the change of regiment is annoying too. And no accessory. So below average for me, it is not a patch on the original. And at £6 each, that's another negative which makes it poor.

There is no "we" that can find that out. LEGO can find out by trying, or by using market research. But unless it was possible to somehow make money year after year after year (like with the modulars and UCS sets) I doubt they would even try. And whatever they did, it would not be as good as half the MOCs out there. Lego probably know that too.

Yes I get the point, 16+ for Ninjago city, and 7-8 + for the majority of the rest. Which works if the rest of the line is huge and there is enough for the kids to get into. There is what, about 20+ retail sets for The Ninjago Movie, plus it is backed by advertising the movie. Would a castle line work where there is one adult aimed castle, then 4-5 small sets with carriages and so on, but no castle aimed at kids. I doubt it. For kids to get into a castle theme, I think it needs a castle they can have. Whereas for kids to get into the Ninjago Movie, they don't need Ninjago City.

Sure, but one of the nice things about Creator sets is that they are very plain and generic compared to the licensed or in-house themes. I'm not really sure why they'd need to bring things under one umbrella-like name if they are not that similar. Why use more detailed figures when they are representative of the named themes. To people with the old sets, sure it was a continuation / reboot / re-imagining / whatever. But that was a decade before and probably wouldn't have happened for families with kids of popular lego-age. The kids wouldn't have been born and the parents too old for it. Why hark back to an old theme when they can start afresh with new branding, new characters, etc? They'd have to either re-use Johnny Thunder (was he out of favour at the time?, with the need to introduce the all new Jake Raines who is essentially the same), or explain his absence. Starting again removes that. They could have easily called PQ "The Adventurers" or "The Adventurers: Egypt", but I guess if this was planned to be one and done, there was no need to theme it as a bigger series. Although they could have started it a year earlier, with The Adventurers: Atlantis, as that was essentially the same just underwater. And followed by The Adventurers: Dino Hunters and The Adventurers: Galaxy Squad. But the problem here is what happens if one of them bombs. Tying them together means that if one is unpopular, the theme is tarnished. Keeping Atlantis separate from PQ, separate from Dino, separate from GS avoids that issue. The only real difference is separate themes under their own discrete names, or an overarching name with the themes within. The contents could have been exactly the same.

Creator expert / modulars are aimed at adults / high teens. UCS SW the same. The other larger sets for the most part are also the same, or they are the flagship set from a movie. I'm not sure a 2000+ piece castle set is a possibility, unless they shift the age range from being aimed at younger to older kids and adults. And I imagine that would hit sales. I'm not sure there are enough older teens / adults wanting to drop money on a large castle compared to the number of families prepared to buy into a castle line. It would also be in competition with the modulars. And presumably if there were still doing a kid castle line at the same time, there would need to be a kid castle, and it would be in competition with that.

Creator can and does encompass many subjects. But most sets tend to be minifigure less, so the set is more about the brick-built creation than the minifigures. When there are minifigures, they tend to be very generic, plain ones. Whereas if creator went down the more themed route, having say Egyptian minifigures for the creator equivalent of PQ, it would not feel like creator any more. Or it could have plain figures, but people would complain about the lack of detail. To make it stand out as a new theme, not a continuation of an older one.

I won't bother replying, as ^ @Lyichir has said exactly what I would have replied. Thanks! :-) I will add though - sets like arctic were clearly branded as a theme inside of City, not in name but in style and colour. It was easy for people to collect the arctic theme even if they don't collect City but at the same time appeal to City fans. That might work with some components of action / adventure / sci-fi / history / fantasy, but history doesn't necessarily sit that well next to sci-fi, for example. That might lead to restrictions in what can be done within the combined theme, when there would be more freedom with a single theme.

I totally agree here. Offering too much stuff that competes with the rest of the range just means that sometimes the kid (or adult) cannot choose and ends up not buying, or realising you cannot have it all and not buying. And the re-stock problem too - shelves are laden with junk that doesn't sell and you cannot find the sets that you do want.

He didn't say it had to be good ... :-) Not that I think NK is necessarily bad, it's just not aimed at me. Funny enough, I bought my son some second hand Chima DVDs as they were 50p each pack, so £1 for the whole of series 1. I bought them out of curiosity more than anything as they weren't on TV here. We have played Chima together for years, he loved racing the speedorz and doing the tricks /stunts with them but only really had a couple of the regular sets compared to probably a dozen speedorz. He had never seen the media associated with Chima (no comics, annuals, cartoons, etc), although I roughly knew the storyline from here and other sites. His first reaction after watching the first couple of episodes was shock that the lions and crocs were enemies. He had always played with them as friends, making up his own stories, blissfully unaware that there was meant to be a story where they were always fighting. When I asked him what he thinks about it, he told me he preferred to keep playing his version, where they get on rather than the fighting version. It's funny how kids play with licensed toys without necessarily knowing the media. He had a Darth Vader for a while before seeing the movie. He thought Vader was a "goodie" and had played out his own stories using him. When I asked him why he thought Vader was a goodie, he told me it was because I have a Vader T-shirt (I am your father), so he assumed he was a goodie. Yet at the same time, he thought Batman and Robin were enemies because Batman is obviously night-time and Robin is day-time.

Tying those points together, many of the complaints about the two waves of LOTR sets were about size. The Mines of Moria should have had more wall and was too open, Weathertop was too small, Shelob's cave was non-existent ... but personally I don't think they did too bad a job of them. They made sets for particular price points. The prices per part were relatively high, but especially the smaller half of the range were more about the minifigs, much like SH sets, and got better value (per part) for the bigger sets with relatively fewer minifigs. Then of course the ship was the other complaint. And the final complaint was that they stopped before Gondor. Similar problems with The Hobbit - the sets were essentially not very good scenery with nice minifigs, with Bag End being the one standout set. But at least the sort of completed the Hobbit in terms of locations and minifigs, maybe except the army builders. I'm never sure how people really wanted them to do the interior of Lonely Mountain in an accurate way, or to do a Battle of the Five Armies and make it look realistic. Not without each set being equivalent in price to a UCS MF. Would LOTR and The Hobbit have been any more a success if all the sets were the size and price of Helm's Deep? Probably not. I know the movies are often described (by their detractors) as "running around in nice scenery", but big scenery is hard to do with lego without going very big and costly as anyone that MOCs big displays knows. They concentrated on minifigs in a little scenery, hitting the right price points. My biggest disappointment with LOTR especially is not what they did but what they didn't, and comes mainly down to missing minifigs. Lack of walls in the Mines of Moria, or a lack of Gondor is possible if not easy to remedy by MOCing. The minifigs aren't, at least not to the standard of the existing minifigs. I'm not really sure what they could have done at the time to improve it. It makes me wonder if LOTR came out five years later, would they have done it any differently based on what has happened in the meantime? Could they have gone down the Simpsons or Disney route and done maybe 2-3 really good D2C style sets (aimed at adults not kids), bolstered by a CMF line? Or the route they are taking for HP with a range of sizes of sets plus CMF. Maybe it would have been better, but who knows. The problem was really the source material, it was not that kid friendly and so CMF would probably not be a good idea, with poor sales compared to other CMF lines. So what would it need? Large sets with 20+ figures in each aimed at adults, costing probably the same as a Death Star? Probably still not good, and bad for the army builders too and has the problems outlined in your first paragraph quoted above.

It would probably cost too much to do a separate keep inside the walls for a kids' play set. The tower with the throne is meant to be the keep - after all, it is where the king "lives" (OK, just about sits) - but is usually mashed into a wall to keep the size and part count down. If they moved the tower inside the walls, it means extra layers for the tower to make it tall again and probably a bigger circumference for the walls is also required, so that there was some room between the keep and the walls for play. I don't think kids really care too much about the historical inaccuracy, after all, many rooms are missing anyway. They have a gate to attack and a room for the king inside the castle. £80 / $100 for a reasonable size kids castle is fine, but £160 / $200 to have it slightly more accurate and bigger would probably put many off.

Galaxy Squad is Space. Alien Conquest is Space. Both out at the same time as SW sets were, if not when in theatres. Some people may choose not to see them as Space, but they are. There is more to non-licensed Lego Space sets than just pre-2000 Space sets. That sounds like Nexo Knights. It was action / adventure/ sci-fi / historical / fantasy all in one. But it doesn't need to be evergreen, if something else similar takes its place and the genre / style still has a good business case. What is the problem with them being one-hit wonders? Every year, something new and exciting, that is "owned" by the kids of that year. More sets sell as the kids want the new theme, and don't see their older brother's sets from a different theme as good substitutes. It means recurrent, ongoing, etc. (Classic) Castle, Pirates and Space are clearly not evergreen as they haven't been on the shelves for many years. And no, Nexo Knights is not evergreen, but IS an original theme (as per the thread title) just as Elves is too. Then there are the evergreen original themes in addition to City such as Ninjago (apparently now evergreen until Lego decides otherwise) and Friends, one of the constant top sellers of recent years.

In the long term it is not good for fans either. Many supermarkets in the UK used to take most regular retail large sets. But 2013-14 saw many of them having to slash prices to move things like The Hobbit sets. Some were 50% within weeks of release, others were over 60% off - for example, Dol Guldur Battle was £25 (£70 RRP) within a month of release at ASDA. That led some of our big retailers to not stock all the large sets, although I think things are turning round again now and most are stocking big sets again even if just online.

These are the two sets that are most similar, @Aanchir has discussed the other sets above. Even though superficially similar (gateway, walls, turrets), there are differences in the designs - very different towers, different gateway, etc. It is not like they have just switched red for blue like some people make out. Otherwise, these castles have what you expect to see in a castle. Any child wanting a castle set would probably love either of them - it has everything you expect for a big castle. It is grey, it has a gateway, etc. They are good as stand alone sets, but are also compatible with each other. They use similar parts in similar colours. There would have been even more of a backlash if they had changed things too much, such as going to yellow for the castle walls, or making just a gateway, or used different style panels for the walls. It seems people want compatibility across years, but also changes and getting that balance right will never please everyone. AFOLS: we want more castle that has to be different to everything you've done before but it also has to be similar so that it is compatible or we're not buying it. LEGO: OK. Different but similar you say. Here's Nexo Knights. One out of two ain't bad.

This is available on lego's replacement parts (71p for UK users), for any forestman fans.