General Magma

I'm not into HP, but these new pieces and prints are wonderful and I look forward to seeing all the other ones we'll be getting. I see lots of potentially great items for castle (and) fantasy builders, too. How many of the CMFs have been seen so far?

Hey all, It seems these aren't available anywhere else, so I'm hoping somebody here might be able to sell/trade me some. I need as many of these as possible. I'm from The Netherlands and would be fine with either receiving a PM or a comment here. Just for reference, that's this one:

As you might know, official tan skeletons have existed for a while now... that is, except for the skull. So now I'm wondering, has anybody here managed to get the official skull print on a tan head, or are there any 3rd party vendors who do this inexpensively? Painting stuff up may be possible, but since I want more of an official look to them so they can be put to use in MOCs, I'm trying to look for the most ideal way to do that.

Come to think of it, the narrative is now effectively defending the AFOL from the first movie. He finally let the kids play with his highly sophisticated interlocking brick system, and look what happened!

The first movie did have Star Wars in it, which is technically Disney property.

They better put tons of references to all kinds of Space themes in there. Looking forward to see the trailer!

Oh, what the heck - Overwatch is getting actual sets, I just discovered. I thought it was just a random idea, like if somebody said "What about some Fortnite or Rocket League or (insert any other semi-child friendly game here) sets/CMF lines?". Unexpected. Then again, indeed, they have done some video game-based products in recent years, including the Minecraft theme. But still, I wasn't expecting them to make sets based on a shooter. The CMF suggestion makes sense now.

Has anything like that ever happened before? (Meaning, video game-wise)

Never really having been in one helps.

That's amazing. So he gets some acknowledgment - I seriously hope the "Billion Brick Race" movie will involve actual race cars and will have Rocket Racer in it as well. Honestly, it would be a huge missed opportunity if they didn't have him in there - he's a beloved character among AFOLs and even just people who were into LEGO as kids during the late 90s or early 2000s would go "Hey! Isn't that the guy from LEGO Racers?". But I'm happy to finally see a Rocket Racer figure, and will be adding this guy to my collection. Perhaps we should have a contest here on EB where all contestants must design a car in the same vein as those from the original 'Racers' game, choosing any theme they want... that would bring a good bit of fun.

Yes, but what I am curious about is whether it actually says "R. Racer". There's a little bit of text on the bottom of the torso, which would support the logo even more.

That's Rocket Racer, isn't it? Does it say "R. Racer" down below, am I reading that right? That plus the logo would mean that he is, essentially, a modern version of RR.

I've done a little bit of research on this, and I've found one person who had to stop selling prints of his LEGO photography since it featured Star Wars characters, but I'm not sure it said anything about the LEGO itself and, in case I ever were to consider doing such a thing myself, I'd like to just make sure there are no potential future problems attached to it. Now, I'm wondering, would selling such prints be legal if it were, say, a model of your own, and what must be taken into account here?

Before I ever decide to submit something similar - creature-based - I am curious to know if there is any more information as to why those dinosaurs, namely the Tyrannosaurus rex, were rejected a couple of years ago. Was it the piece count, or the subject matter, or something else entirely; does anybody have any idea?

I think "not getting the memo" was done on purpose here...

But it didn't stop the chap on top from mentally constructing another evil plot filled with illegal building techniques, clearly! I can't help but imagine clickbait articles in the LEGO World... "If you do THIS with your bricks, you will go to PRISON..."

Just give us more regular CMFs...

No way - the racecar driver seems to have the Rocket Racer logo. Kinda looks like a modern version of him, too; facially at least.

The only sets I've bought in the past few years that are still assembled have been the UCS Slave I and the little Dimensions A-Team van. All other sets have since disappeared into my parts bins and 90% of my LEGO purchases come from Bricklink. It's not so much out of a personal need, it's simply a statement about the current state of LEGO and their rather limited theme offerings. Iconic themes more or less vanishing to make way for licensed sets. Out of themes like space, pirates and castle, where they had been default themes for years at one point, we now really have none of those themes on the shelves at all anymore. When I was a child, LEGO Star Wars was still at the foreground for a good percentage of the time, but I always had the original themes to also indulge in and this gave me a wider variety of things to tinker with, including a broader variety of settings from a broader variety of time periods. Certainly, LEGO is chasing trends, and understandably so - but that does not mean that these traditional themes have to disappear almost entirely.

I feel like 'The Billion Brick Race', about which we now know very little yet, could be an opportunity for a new LEGO racing game. I would certainly like to see something akin to Racers, with various themes being represented in various locations, and I've been imagining what a modern version of that could look like ever since I was a kid. We don't know much about this upcoming movie yet, but what would you like to see in it, and do you think it would be plausible for the above to happen? I'd like to know what you guys think - an updated & modern version of the Racers game would be pretty awesome! But then the question is, what might this movie be about? It's definitely nice to see them steering away from the good guys VS a villain formula at this point, introducing something fresh into the LCU as well as, potentially, the universe of the beloved brick games.

Alright, that cowboy is awesome. Western fans & builders might wanna snatch up a few of these, I for one will - one for the fun display value and then some others for the new cowboy hat. Hope the torso will be useful, too. At least - it may just be the TLM sheriff's hat only recoloured, but that doesn't make it any less nice to have. Keep the Western stuff coming!

Let's put it this way: I'm referring more to traditional themes, but at the same time, I also have an issue with the way things are just jumbled together nowadays. Certainly, "ninjas plus pirates plus superheroes/power rangers plus whatnot" might have a factor of originality, but it feels somewhat jumbled as a way to reduce the number of themes by squashing them all together as one. To me, it lacks vision. Perhaps "astronauts plus police" may not exactly fit into the category of 'most original (imaginative) theme ever' if you describe it that way, but it seemed to have a clearer vision, it was more focused on that vision without a need to tick off boxes with as many different themes as possible, and through that, they could conceive imaginative elements that fit within the theme and didn't make it feel like they were trying to make room for more licensed lines by cutting out their traditional in-house lines. As for your comment on Western themes - it is true that it has always been a rare theme to begin with, but I find it rather strange that LEGO has now doubled the amount of sets they produce yearly since ~2010 and seems to have a limited offering now more than ever. And when some of the only non-licensed themes we're getting are mixes of genres and themes, with no regular pirates, no castle and no other historical themes whatsoever, things are starting to get a little... Strange, for my taste. LEGO, and yet their iconic in-house themes are disappearing. Western was pretty heavily featured for a while in The LEGO Movie - even though it hasn't had a non-licensed theme since the 90s - and so were the other in-house themes I mentioned - to see them missing in action for such a while is just rather strange to me. Your points about Playmobil are valid enough, but at least they still have their traditional offerings left intact alongside those mashup themes.

Certainly, I have nothing against licensed themes in general, but I think they're really taking over the LEGO world a fair bit too much. It's been a recurring trend and I certainly hope it isn't about to get worse, but nowadays, it seems as if LEGO has, for most part, ditched the original themes and puts most of their efforts towards licensed ones. With LEGO being a great source of creativity, it seems strange that brands like Playmobil are more diverse with their themes. You can't go and buy a normal viking or pirate ship, or a castle, or an old-fashioned spaceship, or a historical-themed set with classic adventurers anymore, instead they're being condensed and turned into blender-mixes in the form of themes such as NinjaGO and Nexo Knights, giving original themes as much of a backseat as possible. Even the one source of otherwise unlikely minifigures, the Collectible Minifigures line, is being overtaken by licensed themes, with this year seeing only a single "regular" theme that isn't, in reality, all that akin to the usual CMF themes. It's understandable that they want to appeal to modern kids as much as possible, gathering more sales in return, but surely a large brand like LEGO would be able to spark interest in historical themes or regular space themes again. 2009 (it's been that long already? Good grief...) saw themes such as Space Police 3 and Atlantis, both great themes that introduced some interesting things and actually managed to stick to a main plan. Today's original themes feel more like genre-mixes. I'd argue the same thing about LEGO's video games - original LEGO games seem to be completely gone. Instead of giving children of today a chance to experience original stories set in a LEGO world, they're churning out studded versions of movies they've likely already seen, one after another, and it's feeling more and more like a barrage of dollar-eyed-decisions now. The LEGO Movie had a good message, and actually displayed more of this implied creativity and originality than most themes. It did so with it sets, too, a rarity for LEGO these days. No Western theme, no Pirates, common themes that brands such as the aforementioned Playmobil still indulge in, so the demand for such themes can't be that low. Or have things truly changed that much, with the things we grew up with becoming so obscure to today's younglings that even themes like Castle can only be sold when castles are disguised as space vehicles on wheels with flying battle chariots powered by advanced technology accompanying them?

These are absolutely awesome. LEGO's gotta take some inspiration from you here! Have you ever submitted them? I do wonder if there is any way to contact the current CMF designers.

A line-up of reworked classic figures would've been much more interesting for this LEGO anniversary year. I hope they'll have some Western figures in one of the next ones again, at least.