Blondie-Wan

Hi, Doctor Doom, welcome to Eurobricks!

Thanks for the clarifications, you two. I believe I actually do have some Zamor spheres but haven't yet done much with them, and was unaware of the size issue, though I think I did know but had forgotten about the small flat area.

Almost every license they've ever gotten is for a movie or franchise established years earlier, though. Even when they do release a theme tied to the appearance of a new movie, it's either the newest installment in a series which has been running a while (Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones, Toy Story, Pirates of the Caribbean, etc.) or a new movie adaptation of a long-established franchise (the Raimi / Maguire Spider-Man films that begat the first Marvel sets, Speed Racer, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, etc.). Only a relatively small handful of licensed themes have been launched just as the properties they were based on were just getting started - Avatar: The Last Airbender, Harry Potter (another adaptation, albeit one that came quickly after the source material - the films coming very shortly after the books), etc.

It would hardly be the first licensed theme to be around for a single wave in a single year. But it's also not as though it absolutely needs to be introduced when the subject is brand new to be profitable, either. Their most popular licensed theme is Star Wars, and that franchise was old enough to drink back when LEGO first made it a theme. All that matters is whether it's still popular enough, and I suspect LEGO has access to better market data on this than most of us do.

They choose licenses they think will sell. Grumpy Sparrows is extremely popular - so much so that it already has an extensive array of merchandise. Given that licenses are now a significant part of LEGO's business, it makes sense for LEGO to pursue this particular one. The sets that don't make it through Ideas get declined for various good reasons, even if the actual projects are good. Sometimes they just might require too much production capacity to be diverted from LEGO's other lines. Sometimes they just can't be feasibly produced as mass-market sets. If you're thinking of licensed projects, it's even possible LEGO was actually completely willing to go for them, but the rightsholders declined.

New (short) video!

I've been thinking about this, and I'm actually going to submit a few of these ideas to LEGO Ideas in hopes of getting them to happen. Yes, I'm aware it's an extremely long shot, with a whole established history of multiple Star Wars projects on CUUSOO / Ideas that have made it to review only to be declined or archived, but I still think it might be possible, and I'm going to try.

I don't think there's anywhere close to a consensus on the Minecraft sets being terrible. Lots of people obviously love them. The first was clearly far and away the most successful CUUSOO set ever, and launched a whole theme, which exploded into subthemes sand everything. And as far as the content goes, there's an obvious, natural synergy there, as Minecraft was already being likened to virtual LEGO anyway. Grumpy Sparrows, while not quite so clearly connected as Minecraft, does at least entail structures made up of bricks / blocks, so one can already see certain parallels in place. And the apparent lack of minifigures is hardly a deal-killer. (Argh - can the mods please do something about that filter?)

Maybe, but Kre-O (Hasbro) had the rights to Jurassic Park a year or two ago, and look at where we are now. For that matter, LEGO itself had the rights to both SpongeBob Squarepants and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles just a couple years ago or so, and look at where those are now.

If mods are paying attention, I'd like to request the Grumpy Sparrows filter be disabled, these two threads merged, and the resulting new thread retitled. As for the theme... Well, why not? It's obviously family-friendly, and it's hugely popular. Why shouldn't LEGO go for it? It's very much the sort of thing they go for in a license.

I'm not sure why it particularly matters which balls are used in this set, and why it would be so "poor" of LEGO to sub Zamor spheres for soccer balls or basketballs or whatever. Can Zamor spheres not be used for GBCs? And anyway, isn't the point of the inclusion of any of them simply to have something to roll through the maze? I get that obviously we'd like the final parts selection to be as versatile as possible, as with any set, but why would Zamor spheres be any less (or more) desirable than minifigure sports balls?

That was mentioned earlier in the thread. Some of us think it might be needed just for entering the game content from add-on packs - like, maybe the little disc-shaped bases don't actually have character info encoded on them right out of the box, but instead just have a code on them that lets the game know you have a certain character, and it triggers an Internet download, and that's where your in-game character actually comes from. And after that, the disc base just keeps track of a little bit of data, like how far that character has progressed, but doesn't actually store everything about it like the character rendering, animation, voice, etc. We don't know yet, of course. But that could be how it works.

I'm not 100% certain yet that it actually does have a "special" purpose (one uniquely different from the two L-shaped areas) at all. So far, the only thing we know for sure about the three areas on the pad is that a player will be able to move something from one area to another to execute certain in-game actions. But even that might just be a way to perform an action, and not actually depend on the placement of a character or object on a specific part of the pad. (Mind you, I don't pretend to know for sure. I've already been surprised by lots of things about this game already, so I'm clearly not that great at making guesses.)

The sequel trilogy (or ST for short), I'd imagine. Oh, certainly - I do it myself. But at the same time, I do think people are generally more likely to buy sets when they're interested in the subject matter and not just the builds / parts.

From what I've seen, the "Level" pieces will just be the playable characters in the Level Packs. When you first open any pack, you're directed to assemble the figure (or figures, if it's a Team Pack) and put it on the pad, which then gives you in-game instructions for building everything else in the pack. I imagine the initial figure triggers a download of any data the game requires, whether it's just that one in-game character plus the instructions for the side build, or a whole new level.

Hi there! What kinds of ideas are you thinking of? You might try just checking out the forums here for a while - seeing what others post about, including set reviews, their own creations, discussion of building techniques, and so on, it could help give you a lot of information to start with.

It is - the Elves theme is discussed there. And don't worry about your "secret shame"; lots of us like Elves. And welcome aboard!

There aren't many, but have been a few UCS and "UCS-ish" sets from the prequels: Naboo Fighter Jedi starfighter Republic Dropship w/ AT-OT Darth Maul bust General Grievous ... and, arguably, R2-D2 (who really represents the entire overall saga, after all) ... and, similarly, Yoda (even if the packaging was not just OT but Episode V-specific) There is, of course, opportunity for plenty more, but there's clearly more demand for OT sets in this realm. The imagery of those movies is more iconic, and the particular market segment most capable of buying UCS sets is overwhelmingly more interested in the OT.

Most of those characters have already been done, and I don't think doing the same characters as minidolls will prevent them from continuing to do them as minifigures, any more than the existence of DUPLO Toy Story figures kept them from making Toy Story minifigures, or any more than the upcoming Star Wars constraction figures will prevent thrm from ever making minifigures of Luke and Vader again. LEGO can and probably will continue to use the jester cap for Harley no matter what, even if they stopped doing minifigures of her and went minidoll-only, since minidolls and minifigures wear compatible hair and headgear (and they also just used the jester hat in the new, wholly comics-unrelated birthday cake set, anyway). But we know for a fact they're not done making all these characters as minifigures, anyway - Wonder Woman and Harley Quinn both are coming out in add-on packs for LEGO Dimensions. It's possible that one or more of the female DC characters that have already gotten minifigures might have gotten the last ones they're going to get, but that's true for lots of non-female characters as well, if they're not especially major characters - there might never be another Killer Croc minifigure, for example. But I strongly doubt they're going to just categorically stop putting female minifigures in sets across the board, just because they'll also be doing minidoll versions of those same characters. I think the two lines will coexist.

When it was CUUSOO, the minimum age was 18, and it had nothing to do with the target age of the products - it had to do with the fact that projects are proposals for official, commercial sets, which meant that if a project was chosen LEGO needed to be able to enter a legal agreement with the creator, which kids under 18 can't do in most countries. With the move from CUUSOO to Ideas, they've lowered the minimum age from 18 to 13, with the stipulation that if a minor's project is chosen, the legal stuff on the project creator's end has to be handled by the creator's parent or legal guardian. Everybody here knows LEGO makes some sets that are targeted principally at adults - many sets are too expensive for the spending power of average kids, or too complex for the attention spans of average kids, or simply portray subject matter that isn't of much interest to average kids, or some combination of all of those. But it still has to be kid-friendly - even the adult-oriented sets still have to represent LEGO's values to its entire audience, including children. An adult-oriented set that's too expensive or complicated or unexciting can at least still be seen by kids without exposing them to "unacceptable" content. LEGO wants its entire public presence - every environment it presents to consumers - to be family-friendly. That includes the retail stores, the catalog, the Club magazine, the websites, everything. A set that kids can't afford or aren't interested in doesn't compromise that, but a set that contains "adult" content (in the sense of gore, sex, drugs, etc.) does. It's not enough for kids to not buy it; LEGO doesn't even want them to see it, because anything of that nature could compromise the brand reputation LEGO has built. And they're not about to start offering sets that they keep under the counter in plain brown packaging and ask for ID if you ask to see them. The reason this set comes as a surprise, yet (obviously) does fall within LEGO's guidelines for what's acceptable in an official product, is that the show does routinely feature adult situations and content that pushes their line, but at the same time it's not the central focus of what the show is about. A set that's most representative of the show really does boil down to just a bunch of people sitting around a living room, which is clearly non-objectionable in and of itself, even while there are frequent situations on the show that would never be allowed in a set.

Right, but my main point is still that just because something is targeted at adults doesn't mean it can't still be kid-friendly, and LEGO likes to maintain a kid-friendly image, even with sets targeted at adults. And Ghostbusters and Back to the Future run on TV more often than once or twice a year; heck, they still play in theaters more often than that (in fact, as I write this, in about eighteen hours from now I'm going to a theatrical screening of Back to the Future myself). And there are millions and millions of copies of these movies out there on video, in every format from VHS to Blu-ray, and adults who grew up with them show them to their kids all the time. They may not be the movies that contemporary kids know best, but they're hardly obscure antique curiosities, either. Plenty of kids know them.

Lots of kids love those particular movies, old or not. They're evergreens, thanks to TV and video. It's not like anyone in LEGO's target age group ever saw the original Star Wars movies in their original runs, yet that theme is one of LEGO's biggest. For that matter, one of the licenses in LEGO Dimensions is The Wizard of Oz, a movie that came out over three quarters of a century ago, and for which there's hardly anyone on Earth still alive who saw it when it came out. But millions of people have grown up with it, thanks to television. Anyway, there's a difference between kid-targeted and kid-friendly. A set can be targeted at adults, yet still kid-friendly. Look at the Detective's Office, which is clearly targeted at adults in both price and build complexity, yet it has a Prohibtion narrative with cookies in place of liquor. LEGO tries to have all its products be reasonably family-friendly, even when they're multi-hundred-dollar, multi-thousand-piece behemoths no unspoiled kid could possibly afford, and few kids would have the patience to build.

It's a surprise to me, too, but more because of the not-entirely-kid-friendly nature of much of the writing of the show. As far as what sort of things can be made, though, almost anything is fair game, including sets / locations from TV shows. At its core, it's the same general sort of thing as many "playset"-types sets from various other licenses, whether they depict Bikini Bottom, the Daily Bugle offices, the Death Star, or the Temple of Doom. Moreover, while this particular show might have some questionable elements from the standpoint of kid-friendliness, I think there's no question there's a not-insignificant degree of overlap between fans of the show and fans of LEGO. Furthermore, major characters in the show itself are shown to have an interest in LEGO. There's a natural synergy there, if I may be forgiven for using marketing drone-speak. I think there's a clear demand for this set; the only question was whether LEGO would consider it an acceptable brand fit, content-wise.

I've seen screenshots and such with more playable characters than that in use at once. I suspect the only limits on number of total... constructions (minifigures and side-builds) are that a) anywhere from one to a maximum of seven items can be placed on the toy pad, and b) at least one of those has to be a playable character figure (for each person playing, so at least one for single-player, at least two for two-player). Note how most or all the other TT LEGO games (at least since LEGO Star Wars in 2005) let one have more characters in play at once than players, and players typically switch between different characters for different abilities. I suspect in this game, one can indeed have up to seven characters on the pad at once (and it would just mean not having any vehicles / creatures / sandwiches / whatever). But it would be nice to find out. I'd also like to know whether the game will allow having multiples of the same character used together in a single game. There will obviously be lots of players who will want to play with friends who also have the game, and lots of them will have some of the same characters (if nothing else, there will obviously be a colossal overlap in ownership of Wyldstyle, Gandalf and Batman). What happens when somebody puts two (or more) Doc Browns on the same pad? A pair o' docs paradox?

It's unusual, but not entirely unprecedented; they've occasionally done sets with minifigure counts notably higher than one might expect at a given price point, such as the 2005 Star Wars set 7264 Imperial Inspection (10 minifigures in a $50 set), or the 2000 LEGO Sports set 3416 Women's Team (6 minifigures in a $10 set). Of course those were a while ago, but there have been more recent examples. The key here is the original CUUSOO project. The proposal was for a set of the apartment living room and the seven characters. Though TLG's designers do tweak the builds of approved projects to get the final set designs, they try to keep the basic concepts, descriptions, features, etc. the same as what were proposed by the project creators, since changing too much around and taking stuff out makes the sets fundamentally different from the projects people voted for. With this set, it was important that it have all seven main characters, since that's the project people voted for; if they left out any of those characters, at least some of the people who'd supported the project would feel it was fundamentally not the thing they'd wanted or voted for. That's also why project updates aren't allowed to radically change the nature of a project, like turning a car into a dinosaur - all the people who had voted for a car would now be having their votes count toward a dinosaur they didn't necessarily want.