Blondie-Wan

I voted for every option here other than "None". That said, these themes do return all the time, albeit in a general way, and (usually) not in the specific design schemes of various older iterations (for example, the succession of various Space subthemes, some of which have contain homages or connections to Classic Space). But we usually do have some sort of Castle theme and some sort of Space theme (with "usually" becoming "always" if one includes Star Wars), as well as always having some sort of Town theme (for the last decade called City, and before that a few years as World City, and so on, but the broad general idea is the same, even if the focus, design styles, etc. vary considerably; City / Town also bleeds over into other themes like Creator, Creator Expert, etc.). In terms of specific subthemes and eras, I'd of course like to see the return of Classic Space (and its early successors, like Futuron, Blacktron, etc.), Classic Castle (say, all the subthemes and factions from the '80s and early '90s), and the more recent "Fantasy Castle" era and its immediate successor, Kingdoms. And as long as the question continues to be about what we'd like, as opposed to what has any hope of a prayer of a chance of actually happening, I'll go ahead and throw in Monorail as a crossover subtheme of both Town / City and Space. One classic theme I've not yet seen mentioned in this thread that I'd like to see return is Adventurers (and / or variations / derivatives, like Pharaoh's Quest). In a similar vein, the extant but inactive licensed theme I'd most like to see return is Indiana Jones (which of course has a strong possibility of returning when the next movie comes out in 2020). Other inactive licensed themes I'd really like to see more of ("inactive" apart from hanging on by a thread in LEGO Dimensions, of course, itself on the way out but not quite there yet) are Doctor Who and The Lord of the Rings (or Middle-Earth, if one prefers, including The Hobbit alongside TLotR).

Hmm. I will have to check it out. It sounds as though TRU might be doing essentially the same thing Target is doing, which is offering versions of the Starter Packs that include all the usual stuff plus a free Year 1 Fun Pack, though in Target's case it's the Lloyd pack from Ninjago. That one does indeed have the full Fun Pack, not just the figure; I'd imagine the TRU one with Aquaman does as well, though I'll have to find out for sure.

Apologies for the late reply, but thanks! That's cool, and good to know. Wait, what? There's a TRU-exclusive Starter Pack bundle with Aquaman? I don't remember seeing it mentioned before... *checks TRU site* I'm not seeing any Starter Packs with Aquaman. Where are you seeing this?

As I understand it, it applies to specific properties, rather than simply everything from a given IP holder like Disney. That said, some of its properties might be broadly defined and encompassing - for example, instead of just covering (say) Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid, if sets based on those movies are being made, they might be treated as falling under a blanket "Disney Princess" license that covers not only those, but also Pocahontas, Cinderella, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, etc. But still, it doesn't cover everything. Pixar's works should all be separate (save for entries within the same franchise, of course - for example, if LEGO currently offers a set based on Cars 3, no projects based on the first two Cars movies or the various Cars shorts can be submitted, but ones based on Up, Finding Nemo, etc. can). The ongoing Star Wars theme in conjunction with the new rule means no more Star Wars projects can be submitted, but Indiana Jones ones presently can, even though they're both Lucasfilm properties. And so on.

The Blues Brothers also skews a bit adult for LEGO; I mean, the movie is actually rated R. They don't do R-rated properties as a general rule; the only exceptions they've made with commercial sets have been movies that are part of ongoing, principally PG / PG-13 franchises in which the new installments have R-rated alternate cuts (The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice). I was honestly a little surprised they accepted the Blues Brothers submission at all in the first place.

That rule wasn't in place when the project was submitted. It applies only to projects submitted later.

Huzzah!

Is it true each individual pack from year 2 (excepting the DC promos, of course) has its own Battle Arena, or is it just each new franchise? Are there really 23 Battle Arenas, or "just" 16?

Huh. Well, that is not quite the payoff for two+ years of wondering I was hoping for... but thanks for answering. :)

There's a question I've been asking on and off for over two years now, and I haven't been able to find an answer anywhere, even on Google: And... (bolding for emphasis, twice) And I'm not the only one who wants to know: (Somebody did at least respond to Ashnflash's question, but only with a different question about using a toy pad from one system on another console...) And once again... So... anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? (Oooh, Ferris Bueller's Day Off might've made a fun Level Pack... :p :D ) One more time, for the folks in the back... So, anyway... what does happen with multiple Toy Pads on a single console? It seems preposterous that this still wouldn't be known, more than two years on, but as far as I can tell, no human being in history has ever tried it...

I think DC Comics has a better claim to being the only Year 1 franchise brought back for Year 2 (via the two promos). Over here, the Back to the Future and Doctor Who Level Packs are still relatively easy to find, and commonly clearanced to half their MSRP. Perhaps availability varies by region? Well... I'd be leery of reading too much into that. LEGO Dimensions utilizes a number of properties that have either a single Ideas set outside the range of packs for this game, or no other LEGO releases at all. I know we'd dearly love a full-blown Doctor Who theme with numerous sets, a Minifigures series, etc., but if it were going to happen I think we'd have heard about it while the Ideas set was still widely, readily available. It certainly isn't the first licensed entertainment property to get an official LEGO treatment that just scratches the surface of what could be done with it, and I'm sure it won't be the last. Alas.

They started doing those already, I thought. I picked up Gimli and Eris from there a couple weeks ago or so, and they were 2 for $5 then.

_____________________________________ As for what set(s) I think would be good candidates for reissue, one obvious example to me would be the LEGO Ideas Curiosity Rover. The original had ridiculously limited availability, being sold only online, not in stores, and with two production runs that yielded two exceedingly brief windows of availability, each just days long, a few months apart. It's also not a very large set, and what's more, it doesn't really have a lot of "special" parts - no printed elements, and most of the parts are in common colors, and probably regularly in the factory inventories. LEGO could probably easily whip up a new batch without having to do much more than set up a production line for packing together the parts assortment and printing the boxes and manuals. I'd personally welcome that reissue. But I don't know if they'd bother with that particular set.

Goodness, I hope so. Well, not collectors, but there's a big difference between collectors and investors. I fully get the desire to make money by selling discontinued sets at a premium on the secondary market - in fact, I recently decided to do that myself with some sets of lower interest to me, in order to allow me to buy the new UCS Millennium Falcon - but I don't think it's necessarily good for the greater overall LEGO fandom, particularly the kids who still make up the overwhelming majority of LEGO lovers. I think the overwhelming majority of interest in the big old sets is still from the people who love to have and build and display (and play with?) them, as opposed to people who see them purely as investments. Heck, it has to be that way, even for the investors - after all, the investors have to have someone to sell to other than other investors, or there's no market. I'm sitting on a ton of unopened sets from the last 15 years - mostly not large ones, but still, and they do include a few large ones - and honestly, I'm not really terribly concerned about their aftermarket value. The only thing that concerns me is the enjoyment I'll get from them; my biggest fear concerning their value is whether or not I'd be able to replace them all if I lost them to fire or theft or something. LEGO still is going to retain a ton of secondary market value; it hopefully just won't be insane, and we'll hopefully see less of things like thefts of LEGO from stores and homes, using LEGO for money laundering, etc. I truly do feel for anyone who recently shelled out big money for the original Taj Mahal (though my sympathy is tempered by the fact anyone who can drop $2000 for a LEGO set originally sold for $300 is already better off than most people in this world). But for anyone who bought one and has been sitting on it for the last nine years? Why? They still have a fine, lovely set that's still worth what they paid for it (and a bit more) on the secondary market, and alternately they can still enjoy building it instead of selling it. But they haven't truly "lost" any money - you can't lose what you never had, and if someone bought Taj Mahal for $300 in 2008 and just kept it around all this time, they never had the $2000+ they might have gotten for it if they'd sold it. And it's not like they bought a set and its value actually decreased. As noted, I do plan to sell some sets shortly that have increased in value on the secondary market, but even though it wouldn't benefit me personally as much as the present reality, I'd honestly be happy for those sets' fans if they were still widely available at retail, even though it would mean I'd make far less from them than I think I'm going to.

FWIW, one article I've read indicates they actually did in fact plan to release more packs for Year 1 franchises in Year 3, and at least one of them would have been a Doctor Who pack with Missy. If that's the case, LEGODalekbuster523, I know on the one hand it stings terribly that it was apparently in the works and didn't happen. OTOH, at least you have the satisfaction of knowing that all those times in this thread you asked for more packs for Y1 themes in general and Doctor Who in particular, and others told you there's no way they'd ever want to do more Y1 packs, you were actually right about them surely wanting to do more with those properties.

Has anyone ever determined what happens if one connects two Toy Pads to the same system? To be honest, I doubt it. Unfortunately, I suspect the game may actually have been losing money, and if not, at the very least it surely wasn't very profitable, or they'd have kept releasing material for it. And if the game hadn't made a decent profit in two years of availability, it seems unlikely a third year of new releases would suddenly turn it into the cash cow they'd surely hoped for all along. At least the game did come out rather than being cancelled outright (i.e., never having been released at all), and got dozens of packs from some fantastic licenses and themes, some of which we'll likely never see in any other official LEGO thing. There's still a lot to be glad about with this game, and I think for many of us, there's still a lot left of it to play - I know there is for me, anyway. I now have 22 packs for it, featuring 24 different playable character figures, from 13 different entertainment franchises and LEGO themes, and I plan to keep going.

It's that, but it also pertains to Ideas, inasmuch as it concerns acceptable content for Ideas projects.

True! But not as many as for Christmas (and the content of all of what sets there are is quite secular).

Thanks for the tip! As far as I can tell, none of the packs have really begun to climb in price on the secondary market yet, and lots of them are widely available discounted heavily, so it actually seems like a great time to jump in right now, despite the recent discontinuation announcement. That said... bizarrely, it seems the packs that are hardest to find, at least in my area, are the Ninjago ones. One would think that with so many packs produced for that theme, plenty would still be everywhere, but most stores I've checked out lately either still have tons of them at full price (Toys 'R' Us) or apparently clearanced all the Ninjago packs a while ago and sold out (most other places), while they still have plenty of all the other Year 1 stuff. Ninjago is therefore one of the only two Year 1 themes I don't have anything from yet (the other being Midway Arcade, since I haven't gotten that Level Pack yet). I did recently see the Sensei Wu and Lloyd Fun Packs at a local Target, but they were still $11.99 or so, and I know they're out there somewhere on clearance, so I'm holding out for better prices (had the game not been confirmed as discontinued, I'd probably be more open to buying stuff at full price so as to better support it, but since we're past the point at which it can be saved, I'm just trying to get the best deals I can, so I can better afford it all).

Perhaps, but even if kids get toys at Chanukah to anywhere nearly the same extent as other kids do at Christmas, I did say "most" holidays. If Christmas toy-giving excess is matched or exceeded by fewer than half of all other holidays, I think my statement remains entirely true, and I don't think there's a case to be made that New Years' Day, Presidents Day, Boxing Day, Día de Muertos, Thanksgiving, Valentine's Day, Independence Day, Veterans Day, Memorial Day, Easter, Halloween, Columbus / Indigenous Peoples Day, Cinco de Mayo, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Life Day, Captain Picard Day, etc. are routinely observed with toy blessings rivaling those we see at Christmas.

Because most other holidays' secular traditions don't revolve around giving children toys the way Christmas traditions do. For lots of families with kids in LEGO's core target age range, Christmas is practically all about toys.

Just confirmed both in-store and on the website that the Lloyd Fun Pack promo is available with both the PS4 and XBoxOne Starter Packs, but no others - it's for the two current top-of-the-line systems only. My local Target still has some PS4 Starters with the Supergirl promo as well as others with Lloyd, and still others with none at all.

This is awesome. Is it truly a straight rerelease? LEGO is inherently special for reasons having nothing to do with scarcity or aftermarket value. If a mere rerelease of a set is enough to kill its appeal for you, you're probably not getting what's really great about it as a LEGO set, and if you want it solely as an investment you might as well be putting your money into any number of other things that are actually meant to be investments.

Oh, no need to apologize! I was just answering your question with my own preference. That doesn't mean everyone else who wants the games you want is wrong. My own apologies if I wasn't clear.

I think I'd rather see some of these LEGO themes get more in the way of actual LEGO themes before they get LEGO games. Sonic the Hedgehog has just a single LEGO thing ever made, and that's the LEGO Dimensions pack. Back to the Future and Doctor Who each have just a single CUUSOO / Ideas set and two packs for the game, but both could easily have far more sets if LEGO wanted to make them. That said, if any of these were to get standalone LEGO videogames, Doctor Who makes the most sense to me. As far as LEGO Dimensions being "over" goes, is anyone going to just drop the game just because no more packs are being made? That doesn't make sense to me, but I kind of get the impression that's what people are doing. Personally, I'm just getting started with it. In a way, the discontinuation is actually making it easier for me to get into, since now I know there's an end in sight, and getting everything offered (or at least everything I especially want) may actually be an attainable goal (particularly since many packs are also widely available on clearance).