Blondie-Wan

Holy smokes, 22 minifigures in a series?!

Hm. To be honest, I liked the previous site design much more. The new one is a lot less intuitive to me, I’m having trouble finding things, and I seem unable to find certain options altogether; I also don’t think I care for the look of the site as much. I feel like it’s going to be harder to get people to support a proje- I mean, product idea now. On the plus side, one new rule change is pretty cool. People whose projects accrue 10,000 supports but aren’t chosen in the review get consolation prizes (three sets with a maximum combined value of $500 USD), which is pretty sweet. They're fully integrating the Rebrick contests with Ideas now, too.

They’ve shut it down for maintenance before, like any other website. I think some of the times it came back it was with new tweaks and enhancements, though I don’t recall if every planned temporary outage had one. There are lots of little site tweaks they could do to improve usability. One I’ve wanted for a while is the ability, when looking at lists of projects via the Discover page, to be able to exclude ones that one has already supported. For those of us who have already supported lots of projects, it would make looking for new ones a lot easier.

That, plus a so-called “CMF” series demands a largish number of figures (16 or more), often with new parts, to fill one of three slots a year, and a whole series of such figures from one theme (such as Doctor Who) means something else will have to wait, or not get such a series at all. Brickheadz appear not to have quite the same constraints - they can do a single character from a theme, or thirty, and release them in a trickle interspersed with characters from other themes, or whatever. Design aside, I think it’s simply a lot easier production-wise to offer a character as a Brickheadz than as part of a minifigure series.

So many people would hate that. (I think the greatest density of Whovians in one place would be at a Doctor Who-specific convention, rather than a general geek event like SDCC.)

I think further Doctor Who stuff may not be especially likely, but it’s vastly more likely than further Sonic stuff. But you never know... That said, I think that if more Doctor Who stuff does happen, it’s virtually a given that it’ll feature Whittaker’s 13th Doctor (or whatever other incarnation of the Doctor is the current one whenever LEGO returns to the theme, should it be a while). A bigger question is whether they’d go back and do any previous incarnations (which would now include Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi, both of whom they’ve already done, the latter twice). But if they do any more LEGO Doctor Who at all, it will at least include some representation of Whittaker’s Doctor, at least as long as it happens during her tenure in the role. One other question is what form(s) further LEGO Doctor Who night take. The best bet for it happening at all would be if the BBC stepped up production of the show. I agree there’s enough material in DW’s long history to support a substantial theme of LEGO wanted to do it, but I don’t think they’ll want to do it unless new episodes appear on a more regular basis than they do now. I also think there’s a better chance right now of getting Doctor Who Brickheadz than a Doctor Who Minifigures line.

Well, his original stories are in the public domain, so not really licensed for the most part - though Disney’s take on The Little Mermaid certainly qualifies. But I actually have been mulling over whether to include some of his other tales, and not just because of this recent set. LEGO actually did a series of HCA-inspired sets as a subtheme of Belville back around 2005; I actually have the Snow Queen set. Between it and the other Belville Hans Christian Andersen sets, the recent promo (which I’m very sorry to have missed out on, alas), and the various Disney-derived Little Mermaid items, they’ve done perhaps a dozen HCA-based sets. Thanks for the heads-up! I never actually saw it in its original run (or any other time), so I have no memories against which to measure it, but I’m a fairly forgiving viewer (though I’m certainly not expecting much). Thanks for the reminders!

Yep. It’s quite beautiful. I hope it gets approved (it’s possible the previous one was declined simply for not being a sturdy build at the size it was; this smaller-scale version might fare better). Of course, I’d also like to see the Falcon Heavy approved as well, and it might be a bit much to hope for multiple projects dealing just just with scientific exploration and research, but specifically with real-world space exploration to get through a single shared review, especially when they’ve done several already (not one but two of which are still recent enough to be in store shelves even now). But you never know.

The 40th anniversary is of the saga in general, as well as of A New Hope in particular, and the set pretty obviously represents LEGO’s commemoration of the milestone. It was likely based on those two movies because there had already been numerous ANH-specific representations of the Falcon, and also because by doing so they could symbolically span the entire timeframe from the original trilogy to the current sequel trilogy. (One might hope the 50th anniversary will bring an even more definitive version that specifically portrays the Falcon as seen in Return of the Jedi, or possibly even the entire saga.) Yeah, many would, but you specifically said “the best said about the 60th and 40th anniversaries held by Lego this year the better”, so I tried to please by saying the best about them.

It got the UCS Millennium Falcon - the largest LEGO set in history, and a remake of the previous UCS Millennium Falcon, itself the 30th anniversary set and the largest (non-bulk-assortment) set in history up to that point. Okay, if you like. :) Those were awesome! The minifigure factory set is a special favorite; I made sure to get three copies. And I love the Building Bigger Thinking sets! They have such varied parts assortments, and really encourage free form creativity. And Minifigures Series 18 is truly inspired! The costumes are so fun, and including the classic Police Officer with a copy of its own set is just the icing on the Cake Suit Guy. :)

The difference between Mattel with Masters of the Universe and Playmates with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is that Mattel actually owns MOTU outright, whereas Playmates merely licenses the rights to make TMNT toys (just as LEGO itself did not long ago). Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was initially created as a comic book series, and from there became adapted for TV and movies, not unlike the Marvel and DC characters and stories. Various toy companies (including Playmates and LEGO) have made TMNT toys over the years. They licensed the rights to do so from the TMNT rightsholders. Masters of the Universe, on the other hand, was actually created as a toy line by Mattel. They partnered with Marvel to produce comic books and Filmation to produce an animated TV series, but those stories were meant to promote the toy line, and neither Marvel nor Filmation actually owns the overall franchise; the toy company Mattel does. The reason the distinction is important is because while LEGO licenses many, many entertainment properties from movies, TV, comics, video games, etc., as a general rule it does not produce sets based on toy properties owned by other toy companies. They see doing so as promoting their competitors. It would be like McDonald’s getting a license from Burger King to make a McDonald’s-branded Whopper (or Burger King making Big Macs), or Volkswagen licensing out the Beetle rights to other car companies so that there were Ford Beetles, Chevrolet Beetles, Infiniti Beetles, etc. Note how when LEGO produced Toy Story sets, it included a slew of characters who are toys created specifically for the movies (Woody, Jessie, Bullseye, Stinky Pete, Buzz Lightyear, Emperor Zurg, Rex, Hamm, Lotso Huggin’ Bear, RC, Stretch, Chunk, Twitch, the Pizza Planet aliens), or “generic” toys (the little green army men). But all the characters who were based on preexisting, real-world brand-name toys - Barbie & Ken, Slinky Dog, Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head, etc. - were conspicuously absent from the sets. That’s because while LEGO licenses all sorts of entertainment properties, and also licenses brands from other companies of totally different types than toy companies (Volkswagen, Porsche, Toys ‘R’ Us, Maersk, Boeing, McDonald’s, etc.), it generally doesn’t produce sets based on brand-name toys from other toy companies. For that reason, it is unlikely (not impossible, but really unlikely) that we’ll ever see LEGO products based on Masters of the Universe - or Transformers, or G.I. Joe, or Barbie, or My Little Pony, or any of various other toy lines owned by (competing) toy companies. In particular, those five toy lines I just mentioned are all owned by either Hasbro or Mattel, which happen to be two of LEGO’s biggest competitors. (And similarly, while Hasbro and Mattel also make their own toys based on some of the same pop-culture entertainment properties LEGO does, like Marvel, DC, and Star Wars, they don’t license the rights to make their own toys based on LEGO’s in-house lines - you don’t see Hasbro or Mattel making fashion dolls, die-cast vehicles, etc. based on Friends, Ninjago, Nexo Knights, and so on.)

Possibly, but that’s still a jump from them not knowing the franchises well at all. And plenty of kids do still know them, enough for them to sell well to a mix of kids and adults, even if either group on its own couldn’t do it. Ghostbusters or Back to the Future might not be the primary obsession of lots of today’s kids the way they were of kids in the ‘80s, but there’s still a break from that to kids actively disliking those things. Plenty of current kids still enjoy those, even if they don’t put them on the same level they do some contemporary thing. Moreover, the key thing is that all the things LEGO does are at least somewhat kid-friendly, or at least not entirely kid unfriendly in the way A Game of Thrones would be. LEGO is very conscious of its brand and its family-friendly image, and doesn’t want to do anything to sully that. I think it’s important to them to make sure they don’t put stuff in their stores or on their websites that the average parent wouldn’t want their kid to even see. Granted I’ve been wrong about this stuff before, and I genuinely didn’t think they’d do some of the things they’ve done already, or have coming soon. But even so, there’s still a jump from James Bond to A Game of Thrones, and I don’t think they want to make that jump. At least, not yet.

I hear this a lot, but I think once something is popular enough it can become an evergreen. Does no one take TV / home video / streaming into account? I mean, I knew The Wizard of Oz when I was a kid, even though it came out decades before I was born, and I know there are folks my age who have kids now and who show those kids the stuff they grew up with - Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, The Goonies, Big Trouble in Little China, Labyrinth, whatever. I wouldn’t expect a contemporary ten-year-old to have quite the same perspective on these movies, and I know kids in general aren’t going to have the same level of awareness of them that people thirty or forty years older did/do, but I don’t think these properties are completely unknown to all current kids, either.

I did watch that episode of The Toys That Made Us but had drawn a blank on what it said re: Galidor. It seems strange that it’s so hard to find info on Galidor, considering it wasn’t really that long ago. Is there a way to actually watch Galidor these days? I shall have to see if it’s streaming anywhere...

I was also thinking about those when I wrote this: Essentially, this list is for fiction - characters, stories, and so on from movies, television, comics, video games, books, etc., as opposed to real-world products, brands, companies, etc., like Porsche, Volkswagen, Lamborghini, Ferrari, Ford, McDonald’s, Target, Exxon, Maersk, and so on. But someone should do a similar list for those.

I’m going to agree with Aanchir about yellow skin being typical of minifigures, and about arms / elbows. Minifigure arms and minidoll arms both have the elbows fixed in a certain position (that real human arms can take), and it's ludicrous to suggest arms with elbows permanently bent in that position are inherently more realistic than arms permanently straightened. Both positions are equally attainable. I do agree the stock minifigure mold is more versatile in its simplicity, but that’s not really important to the question of where LEGO is going, the position and future of minidolls, or which figure type is more realistic. Moreover, even in minifigure themes, the trend over the past several decades has been toward increased specialization. While they still make plain-torso minifigures (as seen with this year’s Building Bigger Thinking sets), those are far from the norm nowadays, and that seems to be the way kids like it. We have to remember that minidolls happened because for a large part of the market, as wounding as it may feel to some of us, minifigures just didn’t engage them the way minidolls do. I’m sure LEGO would rather that weren’t the case; it would have been much simpler to just stick with minifigures than to design a whole new figure style, especially one that required far more of the distinguishing details to be molded rather than simply printed. But their research clearly indicated it was needed if they were to have any chance of connecting with many more girls than they were pre-2012, and their sales have borne this out.

Perhaps, but this isn’t listing all the sets or whatever in each theme; it’s just a list of all the different licensed entertainment properties that have LEGO products at one time or another. That said, I might eventually break it down into a couple major groups - one of those properties that are either ongoing with indefinite ends (Marvel, DC, Star Wars) along with ones they’ve done frequently if sporadically over a long period, and for which we might reasonably assume LEGO will be the construction toy maker for the franchise for the foreseeable future (Wizarding World, Jurassic Park / World), and a separate group for those franchises that are one-and-done, where LEGO might do a single Ideas set or a wave for a new movie, and then never return to the property, perhaps even freeing it for some other company to grab. A third group could be for those properties that LEGO hangs onto for a while, even multiple years, yet without maintaining the sort of ultra-close relationship with the rights holder that it does with, say, Warner or Disney, and for which other toy makers are able to step in as soon as LEGO drops the theme (à la SpongeBob Squarepants and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). But for now, I just want to make sure I get everything. I will note that simply grouping into “large” and “small” licenses is really tough, since there’s not a hard, clear line of demarcation, but rather a continuum, with Star Wars at one end and, perhaps, Lilo & Stitch (which might get an Ideas set or Brickheadz or both or something else in the near future, but for the moment is just a single Disney Series Minifigure) at the other. But along the way, there’s a gradual slope - and the sequence might even vary depending upon whether we’re talking about the total length of time the theme is maintained as active, or the total number of sets, or the total combined size and/or price of all the sets, whatever.

Thanks for the feedback, all! For now, I’m going ahead with it. It’s hardly the first time LEGO’s treatment of something includes just a very tiny part of that thing, or combines it with other stuff as part of a larger combined theme. Done! Thanks for the reminder about the list option. I’ll do that later. Yeah, I was really surprised by that one; 007 seemed like something they wouldn’t do - but then, so did The Big Bang Theory, Gremlins, and The Simpsons, so what do I know. And the recent social media activity certainly makes it sound as though we’ll get not just an Aston Martin, but specifically a James Bond Aston Martin (not unlike how there are a couple LEGO products featuring a DeLorean, but specifically the DeLorean time machine from Back to the Future, rather than just a standard, stock, regular DeLorean). You know, it really seems that way sometimes, enough so that part of me wonders whether that isn’t actually the case. But I do know it was a TV show, and the Wikipedia entry for the show sounds as though it was conceived of as a show first and foremost, and LEGO was merely a licensee. I’m going to have to research it further.

Since launching their first Star Wars toys in 1999, LEGO has released a slew of products based on narrative / character-based licensed pop culture entertainment properties. There are so many I’m trying to get a handle on them all, so I thought I’d draw up a list. This includes everything from full-blown major themes like DC, Marvel, and Star Wars, to properties with as little as a single minifigure in the Disney Minifigures series, a single LEGO Ideas set, or an expansion pack for LEGO Dimensions. I’m trying to keep certain properties “together” (so, just having a single “Middle-Earth” listing for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, for example), but at the same time splitting out those properties originally created as discrete properties but since grouped under a blanket theme (so, for example, separate listings for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, etc., rather than just lumping them all under “Disney Princess”). This is just for narrative / character-based licenses, not corporate brands, products, services, etc. like Shell, McDonald’s, Toys ‘R’ Us, and so on. For the moment, I’m also trying to restrict it to stuff with actual, physical LEGO products, as opposed to things that have been portrayed in media but not actual bricks (like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Red Dwarf in LEGO Dimensions, or The Matrix and Clash of the Titans in The LEGO Batman Movie). But I am including anything with physical bricks sold under a narrative-type license, even if the set had nothing to actually do with it (specifically, Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium). So... here’s my list so far, including some upcoming things that have been announced but not yet released. What am I missing? • The A-Team • Adventure Time • Aladdin • Alice in Wonderland • Angry Birds • Animal Crossing • Avatar: The Last Airbender • Back to the Future • Beauty and the Beast • Beetlejuice • Ben 10 • The Big Bang Theory • Bob the Builder • Brave • Cars / Planes • Cinderella • DC Universe • Despicable Me / Minions • Doc McStuffins • Doctor Who • Dora the Explorer • E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial • Fast & Furious • The Flintstones • Friends • Frozen • Galidor • Ghostbusters • The Goonies • Gremlins • Hercules • Home Alone • The Incredibles • Indiana Jones • James Bond • Julius the Monkey • Jurassic Park / Jurassic World • Knight Rider • Lilo & Stitch • The Little Mermaid • Little Robots • The Lone Ranger • Looney Tunes • Mario • Marvel Universe • Mickey Mouse & Friends • Middle-Earth • Midway Arcade • Miles From Tomorrowland • Minecraft • Mission: Impossible • Moana • Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium • Mulan • The Nightmare Before Christmas • Overwatch • Peter Pan / Jake and the Neverland Pirates • Pirates of the Caribbean • Pocahontas • Portal • Powerpuff Girls • Prince of Persia • Rock Band • Scooby-Doo • Seinfeld • Sesame Street • The Simpsons • Sleeping Beauty • Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs • Sofia the First • Sonic the Hedgehog • Speed Racer • SpongeBob Squarepants • Star Wars • Stranger Things • Tangled • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles • Thomas the Tank Engine • Toy Story • Trolls • TRON • Universal Monsters • Voltron • WALL•E • Winnie the Pooh • The Wizard of Oz • The Wizarding World • Yellow Submarine ... and one I know was licensed but ultimately never released: • Phineas & Ferb

Possibly. I don’t know if they have parts existing in the inventory that would work for the character’s helmets to the satisfaction of the show’s fans and rightsholders, and minifigures weren't actually part of the original project submission. If they include minifigures here, it would be the first time they’ve included minifigures in a CUUSOO or Ideas set whose original submission didn’t call for them (I thought Hayabusa might have been the first, way back in the early days, but looking at the original CUUSOO submission just now, I see even it had one). But they are surely aware minifigures would increase the set’s appeal. Many of the comments on the original project call for them, and there are also probably people awaiting this set (perhaps even including some of the project supporters) to whom it hasn’t even occurred that not having minifigures is even a possibility. Perhaps nanofigures, à la the NASA Apollo Saturn V?

The Toys ‘R’ Us Bricktober promo for 2009 consisted of four 1x2x2 Duplo bricks (each printed with a quarter of a picture), a System 2x8 brick, and a System 2x8 plate, that involved collecting these over a 4-week period (one Duplo brick given each week, two of them with System elements) and joining them to form an image of a LEGO skeleton figure.

Indeed it did - and the Sonic Screwdriver as well, which (unlike the hair element) was (is) quite specifically tied to Doctor Who.

The Bad Cop helmet (with “transparent” visors printed on the minifigure heads, à la some Rebel Alliance fighter pilots) might be the best way to go... ... unless the Ideas designers already have access to new helmet molds created principally for The LEGO Movie 2 or something, in which case we could see the first Ideas set to introduce a new mold. (I am assuming, as we all surely are, that the set will in fact have minifigures, but is there a possibility it won’t?)

If it’s not only a large build with lots of parts but also a functional one - say, with the individual lions all poseable and functional on their own and also able to join into Voltron, which would then be poseable itself, and featuring minifigures of the characters? I could totally see fans being willing to pay. I’ve noted several times before that as CUUSOO / Ideas has gone on, it has steadily progressed in various ways and its boundaries have expanded in various ways - among them, what size and price point they’re comfortable with and willing to do. For the first few years, all CUUSOO / Ideas sets came in at $49.99 (USD) or less, with piece counts in line with those prices. Then, in 2015, they pushed a little more, and we had three in a row at $59.99. Then, another $10 jump to $69.99, then another to $79.99, as the piece counts rose accordingly. After a couple smaller sets that dropped back down to $59.99 or under, we got a big jump with the NASA Apollo Saturn V, the first Ideas set with over a thousand pieces (nearly two thousand, in fact), and a price point of $119.99 - excellent value for the set, but uncharted territory for the Ideas line. The next one went even further, with over two thousand parts coming in at $149.99. Heck, just look back at where we were a mere three years ago today, in June of 2015. The ninth set - the Birds - had just come out a few months before, and it had 580 pieces - the largest part count of any CUUSOO or Ideas set up to that point. The most expensive were the Shinkai 6500, Hayabusa, and Ghostbusters, with a US price for the latter two of $49.99. And, as noted, there were just nine sets so far; the next, The Big Bang Theory, was still a couple months away. Three years later, there have now been more than twice as many sets released in the line - the line is now ten years old, and took almost three years to yield its first set, while more than half the sets released have come in just the last three. The maximum price point has tripled from what it was three years ago, while the maximum piece count gone up even more. There was a time when most of us doubted we’d ever see this program yield sets with a thousand pieces or more, and then last year we had two of them back-to-back. Ideas has come a long way in these ten years.

Yesterday I picked up not actual LEGO Dimensions products, but endcap signage from Target. It should be nice decor in my next LEGO room and/or gaming space. It’s really too bad there’s nothing new coming for the game. Had it gone to Year 4, next year’s next LEGO movie would surely have made an awesome Story Pack. (Though at the same time, I’m kind of relieved I can be a completist for the game without having to buy any Minions or Angry Birds packs.)